Pub Ponderings

Reflections on New Treasures As Well As Old at Trinity

2011-10-08T06:50:00.001-07:00

An article I wrote for Trinity Lutheran College's magazine "The Advance".

New Treasures … As Well As Old

Reflections on this year’s chapel theme by the Rev. Erik Samuelson, Campus Pastor and Director of Spiritual & Vocational Formation

This year’s chapel theme is “New Treasures As Well As Old,” based on Matthew 13:52: “Every scholar who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of their storeroom new treasures as well as old.” It’s a particularly fitting verse for Trinity at this phase in our life—having been through an amazing amount of transition over the past few years as we’ve seen expanded academic programs, the addition of intercollegiate athletics, another move of our campus (this time to my hometown of Everett), and many new faces.

I’m one of the new faces, having joined the Trinity family this spring in the new role of “Campus Pastor,” a position created in part because of another new treasure of the past few years: non-Christian students who have been lead to faith in Jesus Christ through their participation in this community. And the “new treasures” continue as we seek to double our student body over the next four years and, thanks to a gift from a generous donor (see pg. 3), embark on an amazing project to turn the Campus Center’s fifth floor into a center for worship and art.

This is a new treasure I’m particularly excited about. By bringing together the arts and worship, with a cutting edge flexible worship space that integrates technology, our students will have a one-of-a-kind learning laboratory to engage in worship leadership, to bring together new and old, and to push forward toward what worship will look like in the generations to come. I think the work we will do in this new space will be transformative—to the students, to our college, and to the Church.

Yet with all this newness, some things haven’t changed. The “old treasures” of Trinity remain and, in fact, are continually being renewed. We continue our commitment to Bible-centered education, service learning, and mission work at home and abroad. We worship, pray, and study scripture together. And we continue to hold central to the Lutheran Christian emphasis of vocation as we fulfill our purpose of equipping leaders to serve Jesus Christ in the Church and the world.

As I’ve been privileged to hear the story of Trinity/LBI, and especially the stories of our alumni, it’s clear to me that while the look and feel of how we operate may be changing (Athletes! Technology! An urban setting! Non-Christian students!), in many ways our heritage is one that calls us to be just a few steps ahead of the Lutheran Church, looking forward to where God is leading us and helping to draw the whole Church more fully into that future. We’re doing as those who came before us have done—seeking to make the Gospel come alive to every person and every generation, and to challenge the Church to keep focus on its mission to make disciples.

At the turn of the century, the founders of the Lutheran Bible Institute gave young adults the opportunity to delve deep into the Bible before college or career at a time when few other Lutherans were doing that. Other generations were ahead of the curve of their day as they led the charge with Lutheran global mission, charismatic movements, training lay people for ministry, and even (ack!) guitars in worship. We’ve seen the value of deep familiarity with the Bible, of uniting head, heart, and hands, and of equipping young people (and not so young people) to live out vocations in the Church and in the world. These “old treasures” continue to be central in the life of Trinity Lutheran College today.

Our theme verse comes as a parable Jesus gives to his disciples following a day full of lectures in parable form where he took familiar images and familiar concepts about how God works and how the world works, and turned them on their head. “The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed … like a treasure buried in a field … like yeast mixed in with flour.” Jesus intentionally put the new and the old, the clean and the unclean, the familiar and the shocking together to describe the Kingdom that God is bringing about in the world, and he instructed his disciples to do the same.

Our task as Christians—all of us—is to continually dig deep into the treasures of the faith and to engage these treasures in new and often surprising (if not shocking) ways. Trinity continues in this work that we’ve inherited, and I hope that you’ll become even more fully involved in it.

If you haven’t been to our Everett campus, or haven’t been in a while, come and check it out. You’ll be blown away by all the new treasures, and I bet (if you keep your eyes open) you’ll see old treasures emerging as well. Join us for lunch during the week or join us for chapel worship on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. If you’d like to hear more about Chapel, our fifth floor worship space, or anything else about the new or old treasures to be found at Trinity, please seek me out. I’d love to hear your story, too.

Samuelson can be reached at 425.249.4726 or erik.samuelson@tlc.edu. His mailing address is Trinity Lutheran College, 2802 Wetmore Ave., Everett, WA 98201.

Thought for the day

2011-08-11T10:37:00.001-07:00

"Only when we have come in touch with our own life experiences and have learned to listen to our inner cravings for liberation and new life can we realize that Jesus did not just speak, but that he reached out to us in our most personal needs. The Gospel doesn't just contain ideas worth remembering. It is a message responding to our individual human condition. The Church is not an institution forcing us to follow its rules. It is a community of people inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at its tables. Doctrines are not alien formulations which we must adhere to but the documentation of the most profound human experiences which, transcending time and place, are handed over from generation to generation as light in our darkness." Henri Nouwen.

A Response to the Recent Violence in Norway

2011-08-02T12:33:00.000-07:00

It was with heavy hearts that the community of Trinity Lutheran College heard about the recent violence in Norway. Our prayers are with those who were injured, the families of the people who were killed, and all who have been affected by these events.

It is so difficult to know what to say in the face of such tragedy. Often, well meaning people offer words of comfort that can feel like less than adequate responses to the violence that has occurred. As Christians, we need not shy away from facing the harsh reality or offer platitudes—but instead we can be bold to call out the injustice and cry out with those who suffer for an end to violence. Our faith compels us to seek reconciliation rather than retaliation, and to work for peace in the world.

In a world where fear and violence seem so prevalent, it is easy to wonder why God allows such things to occur. When we learn that a Christian man was killing innocent people—children—we may ask “Where was God?” We demand to know why did God not intervene. So often it can seem as though God is distant and disconnected from the suffering we experience, yet God stands beside all who suffer, and God draws us and all creation into a future of compassion and peace. Lutheran Christians admit that we just don’t know why these things happen, or why it can seem like God is so distant just when we need God the most. At the same time we know that God is with all those who suffer, that suffering is not a sign of God’s absence, and that God’s presence and favor can not be judged by how well things go for us.

2000 years ago, St. Paul wrote a letter to the Christians who lived in Rome—a city where violence was very prevalent. He encouraged them to trust in God despite the suffering they were enduring with these words: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

We are called to continually remind one another of the love of God from which nothing can separate us, to reject hatred and violence, and to embody together the vision God has for all creation. And so we join with God in solidarity with the people of Norway and all who suffer. We join in mourning the loss of life and in lamenting this great tragedy. And we lift up our voices in prayer and renew our commitment to work for peace and justice in the world.

May the peace of Christ be with you in your struggles as well.

In Christ,

+Rev. Erik Samuelson
Campus Pastor
Trinity Lutheran College
Everett, WA

Automatic Beer Brewing System

2011-06-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

The basic idea is this: a simple, mostly automated all-grain brewing system that could be used in an apartment to turn a big bag of grain into a frothy keg of beer with the least amount of work possible. And, it turns out, we did it. But like all simple ideas, there is a much longer story. It all starts with my dad and his fetish for Crock Pots.

About three years ago my dad got a new Crock Pot, one of the large size ones they carry at Costco. As he tends to do with things like this, pretty soon he began ponder the extremes of Crock Pot cooking--and just how far one could push the limits of the Crock Pot. Many of the details of this years-long experiment are not fit to print, but let me just say the culmination was one Thanksgiving where every dish on the table, including the turkey (I'm not kidding!), had been prepared in a Crock Pot. Even he will admit it had gotten a little out of control.

And the great Crock Pot experiment was not limited to that actual device, but soon began to include other methods of automated cookery--including an electric pressure cooker and an amazingly successful experiment to turn an electric "Fry Daddy" into a Sous Vide water bath cooker (retail versions of which cost in the thousands). That particular invention was created via multiple late night Skype video chats between my father and my brother Josh in California--in actuality Josh is usually the brains behind the operation and my father is the bankroll and the guy crazy enough to actually build these crazy things.

This "automated apartment beer brewing system" developed similarly through late night Skype conversations between my dad and brother. It all started when my brother got a hold of a 100 cup percolator coffee pot from his church that was broken. He brought it home to fix, and started pondering how such a device could be used to make beer. As he and my dad discussed this over video chat, the idea started rolling--and they realized that an insulated pot would be even more effective, and the online research began.

I suppose I should pause just for a second to explain the basics of all grain brewing so that the details of this experiment actually make sense. To make beer, one takes a large bag of grain (somewhere in the vicinity of 10 lbs or more for home brewing). Generally this is barley that has been malted (meaning sprouted and dried) so that the starches turn into sugar that can be leached out into a liquid, called "wort" (pronounced "wert") from which you make beer. This grain is then put into an insulated vessel, called a "mash tun". Most home brewers use the large orange drink coolers that coaches get dumped over their heads after winning football games. A "false bottom" is constructed in the mash tun so that the grains sit off the bottom, above the spout for the liquid. Hot water is added at precise temperatures so that the "mash" (grains soaking in hot water) reaches a certain temperature for a certain amount of time--somewhere in the range of 160°-180° for 90 minutes. This temperature and time converts the remaining starch in the malted grain into sugar, which then dissolves in the water to make the sweet liquid you ferment into beer. Usually this requires a complicated calculation that takes into account the amount of grain and how many quarts of 212° water you need to add (carefully!) to reach that range. Often you get over or under this temperature and have to trial and error your way to the target temp with hot or cold water. You need an insulated container so that once you hit this temperature, it will stay there for the designated amount of time. After this, you "sparge" the grains, which means rinsing them with a certain amount hot water and draining the wort into your brew pan. From here the process is pretty simple: boil, add hops, cool, transfer to brewing vessel, add yeast, and wait. Voila! Beer. (mmm...beer...)

The conversion of the pot was relatively simple. The brew basket was dropped to the bottom of the pot, fitted with a couple of extra screens (from the Cash and Carry restaurant supply store) and a PVC tube to form a seal at the edges so the grains wouldn't end up where they shouldn't be. A few rubber stoppers raised all this up off the bottom, and the metal percolator tube passed right up through the middle of all this.

Because of the nature of a percolator coffee pot (and coincidental temperature settings) this ends up automating most of the steps in the mash process--to the point where a person could set the thing up in the morning on a timer and have the grains ready to sparge when you got home from work. In the coffee pot system, the grains and cold water are loaded in and the pot plugged in. The water heats in the bottom and gets shot up the tube where it hits the lid and washes down through the grains. After about an hour, our thermometer buried in the grains read 170°, at which point the coffee pot shut itself down. It held temperature for the entire 90 minute conversion. Meanwhile, we heated the sparge water on a little hot plate burner (like you might in an apartment) which was ready to go at the end of the mash (and we didn't even blow a breaker). We sparged and the wort drained right out through the spout at the bottom of the coffee pot into our thirsty brew pot below. Just about as simple as all grain brewing gets.

We decided to boil on our high power outdoor gas burner. I've made beer on a hot plate before (in my dorm room, but that's another post for another time). Let me tell you, it takes forever to get 6 gallons to boil on a little hot plate. So we boiled and hopped as we usually do, and then it was time to wait for the fermenting to see if we had just totally ruined a nice big bag of malted barley or if, in fact, we had just revolutionized lazy brewing forever. The specific gravity was right on track for what we were expecting, which was a good sign. But then again, you never know until you taste it.

Come tasting day, we were blown away. We had made a top notch IPA--as good as any we've made the usual way. I was frankly amazed. I was not expecting anything close to a good brew. I figured the coffee pot would burn the wort, or not allow for full sugar conversion, or somehow spoil the process. But, my pessimism was turned around by an beautiful pint of home brew. It doesn't get much better than this. Although, I've heard that there is a way to make whisky in a Crock Pot too.....

Death and Resurrection in New Orleans--FTE Ministry Conference Day 6

2011-06-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

It's been an extremely intense week in New Orleans exploring vocation with these future pastors. Temperatures around 100°, humidity like a health club steam room, and a packed conference schedule--combined with an intense dose of the reality of the struggles of the people of New Orleans--has made for an emotionally and physically exhausting experience. As I travel home I'm replaying the images of this past week in my head, and will likely continue to for quite a while.

One of the things that struck me in New Orleans was the very visible presence of cemeteries throughout the city. The shortest route between where we were staying and the conference events led through a cemetery, and so I walked through several times each day. In the places I have lived (Pacific Northwest and California) we choose remote places outside of the hustle and bustle of daily life to build our cemeteries. They are places to make a pilgrimage to on Memorial Day or other special days, but not part of the day to day life of most people. But in New Orleans, cemeteries seem to be everywhere. In part, they are simply more visible because (as was explained to me) if you try to burry someone "six feet under" you'll find water--so burials are done above ground. This leads to raised tombs and multi-story mausoleums. The grave sites are also very close together, making the cemeteries quite visible in neighborhoods--even when the cemetery is small (which many of them are). And yet, it seems like every neighborhood has a place to bury their dead--and there are some sections of town where there is an entire neighborhood of cemeteries. As I reflected on the graveyards and the struggles of the entire city, I was struck by the similarity in the appearance of the above ground tombs to the bare concrete pads of homes destroyed in Katrina. Like the tombs, these homesites are present and visible in every neighborhood, and bear constant witness to the reality of death and loss.

Grave.

House.

It seem as though--in contrast to most of American culture--there is something different about death in New Orleans. The tradition of the "second line" funeral procession--a joyous celebration with marching bands that follows the solemnities of funeral services--bears witness to this. Death and the dead are not sequestered away to romantic, wooded retreats, but are part of day to day life. In the aftermath of Katrina the reality of death is even more present--with the spray painted "X" marks of the search parties remaining on many of the homes noting how many dead were found in this particular house. The presence of destroyed homes and businesses reinforces this reality--as it's hard not to remember that many, many people lost their lives here.

http://danswenson.com/paper/katrina.html

And yet, the spirit of New Orleans is not one of hopelessness. You can hear in the stories of those who have been working for years on the efforts to rebuild that there continues to be a great deal of hope despite the hard realities that they have faced and continue to face. The people of New Orleans are finding strength to keep going and to re-create their lives and communities. And you can see and hear in the Christian communities that the resurrection of Jesus is not only a source of hope for the future, but the daily hope that they are working together to embody. The work of restoring neighborhoods, of cleaning up trash, of helping people and churches return to their homes, of supporting one another, and showing to the world that there is hope despite all appearances, that there is light even in the midst of deep darkness, and that there is profound worth in what seems so worthless--this is the work of resurrection. And thrust into the shared story of seeing their city brought to its knees by Katrina, the people of New Orleans have found connection to the resurrection story--as Christian communities are leading the way to not only restore hope, but to embody new life in visible, tangible, and transformative ways.

In my many walks through the cemetery, I noticed the abundance of flowers on the graves. Perhaps the constant presence of the dead is a reminder to those in the neighborhood to remember and celebrate life. Flowers in funerals and graveyards are meant to be symbols of resurrection--dead seeds that lie in the ground all winter that then burst forth with new life in spring bringing renewed beauty to an all-too-barren world. The image of New Orleans I carry back with me is one of these tombs/homesites full of blooming flowers--death and resurrection together, of crucified people drawing on their shared stories and shared pain to bring about real hope in the midst of hopelessness.

I struggle, as do many people in my generation who are involved in the Church, with moments of hopelessness about the possibility of transformation for this institution that seems so broken--that seems at times to be doing more harm than good, and often proclaiming anything but the Good News of Jesus. And yet, I continue to believe that God has chosen the Church to be a unique witness to resurrection in the world. But sometimes it's hard to see what God is doing, and hard to imagine how we Christians will be able to get over the petty bickering and side issues we spend so much time on and really focus on being God's people in the world for the sake of the world that God has created and loves so much.

One of the things I value about all my work with FTE over the years is that through these events and especially through the people I have met, I get to see and be a part of the Church that God is bringing into the world. It's a Church where we have found unity in Christ and are working to overcome those denominational and other issues that have divided us. It's a Church where we truly value where one another are coming from, and the unique gifts that each of us brings from our traditions and our unique stories. It's a Church where the Scriptures and the ancient spiritual practices (and some new ones too) create a community that nurtures the callings of all of God's people. It's a Church that intentionally cultivates leadership in young people, helps them notice their giftedness and their callings, and walks with them as the develop into those callings. It's a Church that makes a difference in the world and works for justice, that isn't afraid to confront racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and all the other systemic violence that affects all human endeavors. It's a Church that in word and deed bears witness to the power of resurrection, to the Good News of God's love that we are privileged to get to embody with and for one another. For a few days this week I've gotten to be immersed in this Church once again, to participate in the good work we share together, and to be blessed by the amazing young people God is raising out of this generation to lead the Church into the future God has in mind for us. As we are now scattered to the ends of the earth (well, ends of the United States anyhow) I find myself filled with hope that like New Orleans, we are rebuilding what has been torn down--and that the power of resurrection will continue to blossom and spread.

New Orleans Immersion--FTE Ministry Conference Day 3

2011-06-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

We spent the day today (a long one) more deeply connecting to the city of New Orleans--first with a bus tour to some of the parishes and neighborhoods most affected by hurricane Katrina. (This image shows where the flooding was the worst, and we saw most of these). We saw some of the flood damage, and the efforts to rebuild. We listened to leaders like Pastor Sean Anglim at First Grace United Methodist Church whose congregation was the result of a merger when two struggling churches whose buildings were damaged by the storm. Though they had been less than a mile apart for 100 years, they had never worked together. First UMC had been historically white, and Grace UMC had been historically black. In the conversations about working together someone asked a self awakening question: "Could we better bless our city together or separately?" When they took that question seriously, the began the process of becoming one congregation working together to make their community better. Inspiring.

After a trek around the city in which it was hard to take in all the hardship that people continue to endure so long after the storm, we enjoyed authentic New Orleans po-boys (mine was oyster, yum!) and then set out to the lower 9th ward to roll up our sleeves and do some hands on service.

It was close to 100° and at least 3000% humidity, but it felt good to actually do something constructive after seeing so much need. One topic of conversation among the folks working was "What good does a few hours of picking up trash or cutting grass actually do?". And it's true, our service sees pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of need--and perhaps might even be seen as patronizing by the folks who's neighborhood we invaded for a few hours before getting back on our air-conditioned busses. But the conversations we had around the value of this time were to frame it more in terms of participating in the Christian spiritual practice of service. It was one simple way to practice what is meant to be a lifelong spiritual activity--serving ones neighbor wherever one found one's self.

In fact, the entire week was set up to lead this community of future pastors through a time of practicing Christian disciplines that are connected to vocation and ministry. New Orleans became the context and the frame in which the students explored creating space to nurture and deepen their vocational discernment. We used as a tool the practices developed through FTE's Calling Congregations program--tools for opening up conversation, story telling and holy listening, reflecting theologically on our stories in light of God's story, and moving towards action, both individual and collective. Along with those came the spiritual disciplines of service, worship, prayer, fellowship, and shared meals (good ones at that!).

We ended the day with a spectacular crawfish feed and worship at All Souls Episcopal Church and Community Center.

All Souls has also come to be known as St. Wallgreen's because this church was founded post-Katrina in a former Wallgreen's drug store that the chain decided was not worth rebuilding.

This seems to be the theme in much of the 9th ward and other of the hardest hit (and also the more impoverished) areas of the city--these areas which were impoverished before the storm are simply not worth rebuilding. But the residents of those communities, and the churches and other agencies working tirelessly to rebuild there, are telling a different story--a story where all of God's people are valued and where everyone's community is worthy of being cared for and rebuilt. Our tour guides shared with us some of the less well know issues that have gone along with the reconstruction--including demolition of homes that were not storm damaged to make room for the green space that is in the new city plan and what they called "disaster capitalism" a wave of folks who came (and continue to come) to New Orleans to make a buck off the disaster often at the expense of those with the least resources. It's clear that the work of rebuilding continues and will for a very long time, and that there are lingering issues of justice, racism, classism, and all that goes along with systemic oppression. There is much work that continues to be done.

Though today was exhausting and emotionally challenging, but as I debriefed with the students I was working with, I saw a great deal of hope in them. They were inspired by the people we met--people from churches and neighborhood groups who have overcome the differences that previously divided them in order to do the hard work that God has called them to do together for the benefit of one another and those in need. And as I listen to these young people and the hope they see in New Orleans, I am renewed in my hope for the Christian church. Through this time together with FTE these young people from a whole range of denominational and cultural backgrounds have also been practicing overcoming differences with one another, and are beginning the work of overcoming those differences so that they can work together for the benefit of the whole Church and the whole world.

(This blog post is second in a series. The next installment is here.)

Reflecting on my vocation--FTE Ministry Conference Day 1

2011-06-17T08:30:00.001-07:00

I'm in New Orleans for the Ministry Fellowships Conference with The Fund for Theological Education. I'm serving as a round table leader, guiding a group of first year seminarians at they engage this conference--and walking with them through the vocational discernment this conference is meant to stir up. Its an honor and a blessing to be part of this organization, and to get the chance to participate in this way.

I attended this same conference in 2001, when I received a fellowship as a new seminarian. Its great to be a part of this again, and to give back to an organization and an event that was powerful for me, and an important part of shaping my own vocational discernment.

The first day, one of the questions posed to the leadership group was "Why did you say 'yes' to be a part of this event?" The first part of my answer was that I've never participated in an FTE event that I didn't receive more than I gave. But as I pondered the deeper answer to that question, a big part of it has do do with gratitude for the way that FTE has helped me in my own vocational discernment--especially recently.

In addition to the FTE fellowship I received in 2001, I've gotten several opportunities to interface with FTE and the various projects that they have been working on. Most recently that has been working with their "Calling Congregations", "Notice, Name, and Nurture" and "VoCARE" events--events that are meant to foster congregations as centers of vocational and theological reflection. I've really enjoyed getting trained in their approach (even though my opportunities to enact it in the congregational setting fell apart). The training itself was transformative for me, because as we practiced how we might lead conversions about call and purpose in our congregations, we were all invited (and challenged) to dig a little deeper into our own stories of call--how and where and when we felt (and continue to feel) God's call for our lives. Going through that process really helped me clarify some things I had been wrestling with in my congregational call--and as that was drawing to an end, about what I felt called to next.

It was through the FTE vocation care process that I gained clarity about what God was calling me to do. At one of the events I crafted this call statement: "My call is to encourage and challenge the Church to live more fully into God's dream by innovating in and among communities who are engaging the resources of the Christian faith to include and empower young adults." As my congregational call was ending, and I was looking for the next ministry that God was calling me to, this statement and the accompanying reflection that happened through those FTE conferences guided me in making the hard decisions that were before me--and gave me the courage to take a leap of faith into the current work that I am doing as Campus Pastor and Director of Spiritual and Vocational Formation at Trinity Lutheran College.

The past three months that I have been in this call have been one verification after another that I am doing what God is calling me to do at this moment. The joy of working with the students at Trinity, the opportunity to foster vocational and spiritual formation among the entire college community, and the freedom to innovate with creative expressions of worship is like a dream come true for me. Its a kind of feeling that you can only experience when (to paraphrase Beuchner's words on vocation) "your deepest joy meets the world's deepest need." It's a joy I intend to pass along to the students (and others) that I will work with.

As I reflect on my call statement, it is no wonder to me that I would commit a week to be here in New Orleans with these future pastors--to be part of their journey of self discovery and discernment. FTE is a community that engages the resources of the Christian faith to include and empower young adults--in fact, I believe the work of FTE will emerge as some of the most significant work being done in the Church. I am overjoyed and most certainly blessed to be here with these folks--sharing cafe au lait, beignets, and deep conversation about what God is calling all of us to be about together.

(This post is the first in a series. The next installment is here.)

Theology Pub 6-5-11--Power

2011-06-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

Theology Pub

6/5/11

Theme: Power

So when they had come together, they asked Jesus, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:6-8)

This is an open time for conversation around this topic (and any others that seem important). Please allow everyone in your group to participate in the conversation (or not to if they so choose). Conversation starters are on the back if you want to make use of them. There are no right answers. Just don’t be jerks. And tip your servers.

Some conversation starters:

What does the word power stir up in you?

What images of power do you see in the media/art/music/etc?

Where do you see power used well?

Where do you see power abused?

Do you consider yourself powerful?

Do you want to be powerful?

How does a person gain power?

How does a person loose power?

(if there is a Lutheran theologian in the group) Explain the “theology of the cross”. How does that affect how we see power?

Is it possible to share power? To give power to others? To take power from others?

An (un)Orthodox perspective on Hell

2011-04-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

The publication of Rob Bell's new book "Love Wins" has prompted a firestorm of blog posts, mostly relating to claims of people (most of whom have not read the book) that Bell is a universalist and does not believe in Hell. I have not weighed in, mostly because I haven't been blogging lately, but also because I haven't read the book (yet) and hate when people make all sorts of comments about something they haven't read (and generally have no interest in reading). So I'm not actually going to offer comment on the book or Bell's theology. But I had an interesting conversation this past week about Hell, and figured it was worth sending into the blogosphere.

Last Saturday, I was hanging out with a group of Trinity College students at a Russian Orthodox monastery (like you do). At lunch, the Abbott was explaining to the students the chief differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. One of the chief theological differences he explained was that Eastern Christians don't believe that God created a place called Hell where some spend eternity. The ears of the students were perked up by this claim, and he went on to explain that Eastern Christians do believe in the fire of God, and that eternity can either be joyful bliss in union with God or torment (in union with God). He used the image of light: when you walk from a darkened room into daylight your eyes are unaccustomed to that overwhelming light and you experience it as blinding and painful. Similarly, eternity with God can be overwhelming to those who aren't used to being in God's presence. In the Eastern understanding, he explained, the purpose of life for a Christian is growing more and more accustomed to being in God's presence. In this way when we die (and come fully into God's presence) we aren't blinded and don't experience union with God as torment. It's the same reality, the same eternity, the same unity of God with all creation. The difference between Heaven and Hell is in how we experience it. And how we experience it depends on how ready we are.

Now, I had never heard anything like this before. Hell, for me, has been one of those parts of Christianity that I haven't spent a lot of time worrying about. There's not all that much support for it that I can find in the Bible, (though plenty about fire and wrath) and it seems to me that popular media (starting perhaps with Dante's Inferno) have shaped the cultural understanding of Hell and it's ruler—a red-skinned horned dude with a pitchfork. From time to time I imagine that if I were in charge I'd send some folks there (not many people, mind you, but folks like Hitler, Saddam Husein, and the guy who wrote “It's a Small World”.) But my own theology of Grace and how I have come to know God in Jesus makes this somewhat arbitrary system of eternal room assignments based on human choice seem cruel. What sort of God sends billions of people to the furnace simply because I didn't get off my duff and force them to pray some prayer? And what about humanity before year 0? All of those folks in Hell? Really? Forever? Hell is one of those things I've assigned to the mystery of God, and have sort of adopted what has been described to me as Luther's view of “single predestination”. In the more common “double predestination” the claim is made that “some are predestined for eternal salvation, and some for eternal punishment”. Single predestination makes the claim that “some are destined for eternal salvation, and ...” at which point the person making the claim walks out of the room to find a more interesting way to spend their afternoon.

But something about the way this Russian Orthodox monk articulated his understanding of eternity is compelling to me. In some ways it is universalist in that everyone gets to spend eternity with God. It seems to me that a good God who created all that is and is bringing all creation into wholeness would want that. And yet, it's not as if our lives and our choices don't matter. To live as a Christian is to be preparing for eternity, to be little by little acclimating to standing in God's presence so that when that day finally arrives we aren't plowed under by the experience. And meanwhile, we are inviting and walking with others who are making this journey as well—helping one another see light in the darkness and encounter God in the midst of our own messy existence. Coming into God's presence is only hellish if you've been so inwardly focused—so accustomed to darkness—that the pure light overwhelms you. It also helps reconcile what I understand Jesus to be talking about when he goes on and on about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God, Jesus says, is not just pie in the sky when you die (I'm paraphrasing) but is breaking in to the world here and now—and if we pay attention we can participate in it. If the life of a Christian is a process of growing more and more accustomed to standing in God's presence, doesn't it make sense that along the way Earth begins to look more and more like Heaven?

It seems to me that the way we experience life has a lot to do with our own perspective and what we bring to the whole thing. What if after-life is the same?

On the life and death of the ELCA

2011-02-18T10:20:00.000-08:00

An ELCA Lutheran (seminiarian I think) named Gary posted this as part of a comment on David Housholder's blog. It's a fantastic summary of some things I've been wanting to find words to say. Thanks Gary, whoever you are!

"I believe the Church is not called to be a prosperous organization, but to be the Body of Christ in the world. Thus, it is important for me to remember what the Body of Christ does: be born, grow, teach, heal, live with the least, speak truth about the human condition, speak truth about God, remain faithful to scripture, not engage in violence for self-protection, die, be buried, rise from the dead. As far as I can tell, being afraid that a denomination is “dying” makes little sense – but being afraid that the Church is dying makes less. If your concern is about the ELCA in particular, I must say that I believe the ELCA will find a way to live its call. But if it doesn’t, it doesn’t – and that is the way it should be. It might be important to remember that it is Christ that is to be pushed, not the ELCA (though I like to think the two can go hand-in-hand)."

Trinity Lutheran College welcomes new Director of Vocational and Spiritual Formation

2011-02-06T14:43:00.000-08:00

From: John Reed
Sent: Fri 2/4/2011 1:45 PM
Subject: Trinity welcomes new Director of Vocational and Spiritual Formation

Dear Trinity Community and college friends,

We continue to be a college on the move. As we grow, we are committed to nurturing the spiritual and vocational discernment of our students and to nurturing our chapel experiences. Toward that end, we are pleased to welcome the Rev. Erik Samuelson as Director of Vocational and Spiritual Formation. The part-time position will begin March 1.

Like other members of our Living-Learning Community, Pastor Samuelson will support a number of strategic initiatives, though his primary charges will be to shepherd the first-year Vocation & Formation program and to foster a high-quality chapel experience, providing a pastoral resource to students, faculty, and staff.

The selection team included representation from faculty, staff, students, and the board. I, too, was pleased to get to know him and his heart during this prayerful process.   I am particularly enthusiastic for his passion for ministry to young adults, his authentic commitment to a rich and compelling expression of Lutheran theology, a commitment to supporting our pan-Lutheran and ecumenical identity, his understanding of the doctrine of vocation, and his enthusiasm about the future and relevance of Trinity's educational mission.

Sincerely,

John W. Reed
President

ERIK SAMUELSON BIOGRAPHY

The Rev. Erik Samuelson grew up in Everett, WA, where he graduated from Cascade High School. He then worked his way down the West Coast, first at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, where he studied Classics and Religion (and bartending) and met his wife Tauni, a pediatric nurse. Erik and Tauni then moved to Berkeley, CA, where Erik completed a Master of Divinity at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and a Master of Arts in Systematic and Philosophical Theology (with an emphasis on the theology of the Lutheran Confessions) from the Graduate Theological Union. In 2006, Erik was ordained a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Most recently, Erik has been serving as pastor/mission developer at a redevelopment congregation in Spokane, WA, where he and Tauni have lived for the past 5 years with their two children, Lily (3) and Emma (5).

Erik has had an interest in experiential worship and faith development since his days at PLU, where he was part of a campus ministry team that began what would now be called an emergent worship experiment called Common Ground. He has served on the planning team for the ELCA Youth Gathering since 2001, working with the creative team that puts on the "big events" in the dome, including worship. (Ask him sometime about how one organizes communion for 40,000 people.) Erik is approved as an ELCA mission developer, was a voting member at the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, is a member of the ELCA's Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission Program Committee, and is part of a network of young ELCA pastors using the methods of community organizing for new and renewed mission in the world. He has a passion to help translate the Gospel of Jesus as understood in the Lutheran tradition to people who have not been encountered by it—particularly people aged 18-40—and to participate in authentic relational communities that are seeking to concretely embody the Way of Jesus in a life lived together in the world. He also loves to talk about Jesus in coffee shops and pubs.

Erik's prayer and worship life is shaped and nourished in major ways by the Acts of the Apostles, the Taizé Community, the writings of Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the liturgy and theology of the Lutheran Church.   Erik sees the Lutheran Church (and Trinity Lutheran College) as poised to make a significant difference in the emerging reformation of the Christian Church—a reformation perhaps as significant as the one in the 16th Century.   He takes seriously the call of God in Baptism, believes that each and every person is called by God for significant work and service in the world, and loves to help people connect deeply to their vocations. Erik describes his call to ministry in this way: "I am called to encourage and challenge the Church to live more fully into God's dream by innovating in and among communities who are engaging the resources of the Christian faith to include and empower young adults." He's excited to live out this calling in his hometown of Everett and within the community of Trinity Lutheran College.

You can find Erik on Twitter and Facebook (pubpastor) and can read his blog at www.pubpastor.com.

Luther's Third Way of Gathering Christian Community

2010-10-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

My current congregation has had a bit of a kurfuffule over worship furniture, which raised the issue of what are "genuine Lutheran" ways of worshiping. In preparation for some conversation about slab-altars vs table-altars I pulled volume 53 of Luther's Works off the shelf. And I read some stuff there that is revolutionary even today. Man, Luther, you were WAY ahead of your time.

This volume, entitled "Liturgy and Hymns" contains (among other things) Luther's "Deutsche Mass" (German Mass), a document which he wrote in 1526 to help the congregations in Germany who were beginning to switch from Sunday services in Latin to German. (The whole thing is available online here, worth a read). In 1523 he had written an order of service for the churches in the town of Wittenberg, but in the Deutsche Mass makes clear that he "does not propose that all of Germany should uniformly follow our Wittenberg order." (pg 62) Instead he offers a basic outline and some theological reflections about worship, tools to help churches wherever they find themselves construct an order of worship that makes sense for them and at the same time is rooted in the great Christian faith. He outlines three different types of worship services, and while it is the "third way" that is most interesting to me, I'll give a rundown of the other two (and where I see them in practice today).

The first kind of worship service that Luther outlines is the "traditional" Latin Mass that was common at the time. As the Lutheran churches became dominant in Northern Germany, Luther did not require all of a sudden that people give up the type of worship that they were accustomed to. The mass said in Latin in its traditional style was kept in many places (though Luther advocated for clarifying some of the more theologically troubling parts). The service was said and sung entirely in Latin, and so was accessible only for those who had been brought up attending, or those who had studied Latin and could therefore follow along. But in Luther's place and time this applied to fewer and fewer folks--and most of the people had no idea what was going on (leading many to quit attending frequently or at all). Luther says "For in no wise would I want to discontinue the service in the Latin language, because the young are my chief concern." (pg 63) Those who continue to be brought up in the church, and are taught the language, still gain much from this form--and so (unlike many of his contemporaries) thought it fine to continue it. Many Lutherans have relished in this example of Luther "the conservative reformer" who was as likely to keep tradition as to change it.

This "first way" seems analogous to me to the "traditional" Lutheran worship of the 20th Century which is being carried forward into the 21st in many places as THE WAY of Lutheran worship. While the language of traditional liturgical worship is technically English, the complexities of traditional liturgical Lutheran worship are confusing (if not totally mystifying) to those who were not raised attending or who have studied the traditional liturgy in later life. This is the way of worshiping I was brought up in --ala Setting Two of the "green book" (aka Lutheran Book of Worship), itself a continuation of the setting in the "red book" a generation before. This tradition takes great pride in tracing a direct line to Luther's liturgical reform. And while I certainly would not advocate the abandoning of this magnificent form of worship (I really adore worship in this mode) in many ways and to many people, it might as well be in Latin. This way of worship is most of what I've seen in ELCA Lutheran congregations (whether the newest hymnal be "blue" or "cranberry").

The "second way" that Luther talks about is the "German Mass" that this document is named after, a service that "should be arranged for the sake of the unlearned lay folk." (pg 63) Luther cautions that the service not simply be based on novelty: "For those who itch for new things will soon be sated and tired with it all." (pg 89). But at the same time that "it is best to plan the services in the interest of the young and such of the unlearned as may happen to come." (pg 89). Key to "German Service" was Bible reading, preaching, and singing in a language that was readily accessible to those who came--particularity the young and uneducated. Without this regular, accessible connection to Scripture and the basics of Christian faith, Luther knew that "people can go to church daily and come away the same as when they went. For they think they need only listen at the time, without any thought of learning or remembering anything. Many a man listens to sermons for three or four years and does not retain enough to give a single answer concerning his faith--as I experience daily." (pg 67). Luther longed to open up the service so that the proclamation of the Word could transform the hearts and lives of those who heard it.

I see this "second way" today in congregations that have made attempts at "contemporary" or "casual" services (though after a generation, these become "traditional" too and more like the "first way"). Like the German Mass in Luther's day, these "contemporary" services continued to be structured in some way or another around the ancient "ordo", the liturgical pattern shared among Christians. But the emphasis is opening up the complexity of liturgy with language, music, and actions that don't require years of exposure and/or training to connect to--especially with the intention of reaching the young and/or non-Christians. Though generally less liturgically structured, the "seeker friendly" services that draw on the Evangelical movement are in a similar mode. The "worship wars" of the 1980's and 1990's seem to me to be a battle over which of these two modes is best. But to follow Luther's advice, "These two orders of service must be used publicly, in the churches, for all the people among whom are many who do not believe and are not yet Christians." (pg 63).

But as Lutheran congregations battled (to the death sometimes) over "traditional" vs "contemporary" modes of worship, we've missed out on Luther's "third way." What he writes about this "third way" is so amazing I'm going to let it stand on its own (and in the older translation, which I like better here):

But the third sort [of Divine Service], which the true type of Evangelical Order should embrace, must not be celebrated so publicly in the square amongst all and sundry. Those, however, who are desirous of being Christians in earnest, and are ready to profess the Gospel with hand and mouth, should register their names and assemble by themselves in some house to pray, to read, to baptize and to receive the sacrament and practise other Christian works. In this Order, those whose conduct was not such as befits Christians could be recognized, reproved, reformed, rejected, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ in Matt. xviii. Here, too, a general giving of alms could be imposed on Christians, to be willingly given and divided among the poor, after the example of St. Paul in 2 Cor. ix. Here there would not be need of much fine singing. Here we could have baptism and the sacrament in short and simple fashion: and direct everything towards the Word and prayer and love. Here we should have a good short Catechism about the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer.

In one word, if we only had people who longed to be Christians in earnest, Form and Order would soon shape itself. But I cannot and would not order or arrange such a community or congregation at present. I have not the requisite persons for it, nor do I see many who are urgent for it. But should it come to pass that I must do it, and that such pressure is put upon me as that I find myself unable with a good conscience to leave it undone, then I will gladly do my part to secure it, and will help it on as best I can. In the meantime, I would abide by the two Orders aforesaid; and publicly among the people aid in the promotion of such Divine Service, besides preaching, as shall exercise the youth and call and incite others to faith, until those Christians who are most thoroughly in earnest shall discover each other and cleave together; to the end that there be no faction-forming, such as might ensue if I were to settle everything out of my own head.

(From Project Wittenberg. In LW53 the same is on pg 63-64)

That, to me, looks a lot like the house church movement, and the Emergent Church. Anyone agree?

This "third way" that Luther wrote about nearly 500 years ago remains something we as Lutherans have not gotten too involved in as of yet. Luther may not have seen it happen in his day (nor had people longing for it) but the more people I talk to (especially those under 40 and others outside the organized church) this "third way" seems to be precisely what they long for. I think it's time for us who claim the name Lutheran to make Luther's dream for Christians gathering in the "third way" come about in more places--even as the other two forms continue to function and bring life to people in their own ways. I'm finding myself "unable with a good conscience to leave it undone" anymore. Who's with me? (We'll be "cleaving" in the pub, by the way. =) )

A poem for today

2010-10-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

I once described by life's vocation as "being a doorman for the Kingdom of God". I recently re-read this poem and I wonder if this is where I got the idea. This is good stuff, and makes me remember why the work I am called to is so hard most of the time.

I Stand by the Door
by Sam Shoemaker

I stand by the door.
I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out,
The door is the most important door in the world-
It is the door through which people walk when they find God.
There's no use my going way inside, and staying there,
When so many are still outside and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find
Is only the wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind people,
With outstretched, groping hands.
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
Yet they never find it ...
So I stand by the door.The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for people to find that door--the door to God.
The most important thing any person can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
And put it on the latch--the latch that only clicks
And opens to the person's own touch.
People die outside that door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter—
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live, on the other side of it--live because they have not found it.
Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it, and walk in, and find Him ...
So I stand by the door.
Go in, great saints, go all the way in--
Go way down into the cavernous cellars,
And way up into the spacious attics--
It is a vast roomy house, this house where God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements,
Of withdrawal, of silence, of sainthood.
Some must inhabit those inner rooms.
And know the depths and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in,
Sometimes venture in a little farther;
But my place seems closer to the opening ...
So I stand by the door.
There is another reason why I stand there.
Some people get part way in and become afraid
Lest God and the zeal of His house devour them
For God is so very great, and asks all of us.
And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia,
And want to get out. "Let me out!" they cry,
And the people way inside only terrify, them more.
Somebody must be by the door to tell them that they are spoiled
For the old life, they have seen too much:
Once taste God, and nothing but God will do any more.
Somebody must be watching for the frightened
Who seek to sneak out just where they came in,
To tell them how much better it is inside.
The people too far in do not see how near these are
To leaving--preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door,
But would like to run away. So for them, too,
I stand by the door.
I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was
Before they got in. Then they would be able to help
The people who have not, yet even found the door,
Or the people who want to run away again from God,
You can go in too deeply, and stay in too long,
And forget the people outside the door.
As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,
Near enough to God to hear Him, and know He is there,
But not so far from people as not to hear them,
And remember they are there, too.
Where? Outside the door--
Thousands of them, millions of them.
But--more important for me--
One of them, two of them, ten of them,
Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.
So I shall stand by the door and wait
For those who seek it.
"I had rather be a door-keeper ..."
So I stand by the door.

Sam Shoemaker, founder of Faith At Work at Calvary Episcopal Church in New York City, in 1926, was also one of the spiritual leaders who helped draft the 12 Steps of A.A.

(I found this typed version of the poem on the "Faith at Work" website, and they like their info to go along with reproductions so here goes: Faith @ Work magazine is a ministry of Faith At Work, Inc.
Duplication of articles is permissible, provided credit is given to the author and Faith At Work. Contact Faith At Work on the web: www.FaithAtWork.com or by phone: 800-245-7378 or 703-237-3426. Faith at Work™ and Faith@Work™ are registered trademarks of Faith at Work, Inc.)

What is Christian community?

2010-07-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

I was doing some pre-work for a training I'm attending next week, and one of the questions was:
"Briefly describe your biblical/theological framework for community." I thought I'd post my answer here and see what folks think (and what should be added).

What is Christian community?
We eat. We drink. We get mixed up in one another's lives. We tell our stories. We find ourselves in God's story. We seek out ways to live our values together. We love. We argue. We mess up. We forgive. We live as followers of Jesus in a world that longs for Good News. We notice our neighbors. We give ourselves away. We are not content with things as they are. We break down distinctions. We serve. We share gifts. We participate in what God is up to in the world. We are the Body of Christ.

Portland Craft Beer Adventure

2010-07-12T22:05:00.000-07:00

Man, it has been a long time since I've posted. I always say that I blog a lot more on weeks I'm not preaching, but I didn't preach last Sunday, and no posts. I'm on vacation this week, so I'd better get something going. I've had several posts "in the hopper" for a while (meaning I have ideas that haven't found their way to the interwebs) but they just seem to be fermenting slowly.

Speaking of fermenting, that reminds me that I often find it best to get back in the blog habit by writing about beer. And what a weekend it was for beer. My wife's grandfather died last week, which accelerated our planned vacation trip to Portland by several days so we could attend the funeral. But it also meant that my wife's sister and her husband came to town, and (thanks to babysitting grandparents) we got a day to adventure.

It's "Craft Beer Month" in Oregon, an event that culminates in the spectacular "Oregon Brewers Festival" this weekend (which I will miss due to camping, too bad). But throughout the month are a number of other events and such, and really, every month in Portland is a good one for craft beers. On our first day here I happened to stumble upon a copy of Portland Monthly Magazine with this irresistible cover:

It turns out it was a great issue, with listings for "Best of" for all sorts of things in addition to 48 Best Craft Beers including Best Brewpub, Best Bottle Shop, Best Brewery Tour, etc. And it became the blueprint for a Portland Craft Beer Adventure.

The first place we decided to check out was "Saraveza" in Northeast Portland.

The photo in the magazine (similar to this one my wife took) showed a spectacular retro beer cooler, so I had somehow connected in my head that this was "Best Bottle Shop" but really it was "Best Continental Selection". Since this was meant to be a Portland Craft Brew Extravaganza, you might think this would have been a fatal mistake, but in fact, this really cool old school pub (with lots of Ranier and Oly kitch lining the walls and shelves) DID have a great bottle shop, with both local and worldwide beers--and we stocked up for the "play at home" portion of the evening. They also had a wide range on tap, so we decided to split a 5 sample taster between us.

Because the women were with us, I ordered the "Flemish" beer they had on tap as one of our samples, since it sounded like the kind of thing they would like. Normally I avoid Belgians (I know, what kind of beer snob am I?) and I'd never tried a Flemish style, so I gave it a try and was surprised at how good it was. Before we left we decided to trade out an IPA that we'd picked that was also in the sample tray (turns out it was a LAGER--and tasted like crap. Who makes India Pale Lager anyway?). We wanted to replace it with a Flemish, and since they didn't have the one we'd sampled in bottles, the bartender suggested "Duchess de Bourgogne" and boy, was that a good choice. This is now one of my new favorites, and makes me think I may even be able to be turned to Belgians. Maybe.

The other great find at Saraveza were these little beer journals they had on the counter for $4.

My brother-in-law and I picked up one each, and it turned out to be a lot of fun--our adventure had suddenly become a serious beer geek tasting and grading expedition. We took it pretty seriously throughout the rest of the day (much to the initial amusement and then growing annoyance by the women-folk). Here's an example of one such entry (for the aforementioned "Duchess":

Next stop was Hopworks Urban Brewery for lunch (rated Best Brewpub Overall in the magazine). The real reason we were going was to attempt to see the "bicycle bar" I'd stumbled onto a picture of online last week. We enjoyed some great pizza and beer (their IPA is now my #3 beer after Diamond Knot IPA and Ninkasi Total Domination IPA). One big plus for beer geeks with little books, the HUB brewery lists the "stats" for their beers on the menu and on the beer list chalkboard. My Organic IPA was 6.6% ABV, 75 IBUs, and had an OG of 15. My wife's "Velvet Underground Imperial Black ESB" was 8.7% ABV (wowza!), 56 IBUs, and had an OG of 21. Nerdy, nerdy beer fun.

This pub has a whole bicycle theme (I nearly bought the bike jersey, and even more nearly the bike socks) in addition to brewing organic beer, sustainable food, and having a "green" building. This is a place I would certainly frequent regularly if we lived anywhere around here. But the crowning glory was sweet talking our waitress (after a nice tip) into letting us check out the bike bar. She arranged it with the brewery (literally downstairs from the pub) and down we went. The bike was as amazing in person as it was online, and I kinda wanted to take it for a spin. But I didn't.

But I really wanted to.

During our meal, the beer geeks perused the stack of Northwest Craft Beer related literature we had collected on our adventure thus far as we debated what would be the final stop on this journey. My brother-in-law and I, reading different local beer magazines (ok, pause for a moment, there are MULTIPLE local magazines, newspapers, etc devoted to beer in Portland. No wonder people love this city.) Anyhow, we were reading different magazines and both came upon the same ad for an event called "Puckerface" featuring sour beers at a "Beer Cafe" called Belmont Station in another part of town. Given our fondness for the quite sour Flemish, we thought we'd give that a shot. As I turned back to the original magazine that started this adventure, I came to realize that this pub is the pouring half of the Belmont Station Bottle Shop, which was actually the one rated "Best Bottle Shop". And so we were on our way.

We hit the Bottle Shop first, and it was quite spectacular.

They had TONS of beers (and some wines, including wine in 12oz aluminum cans) at good prices. And for only $1.50 more the attached pub would pour your recently purchased bottle into a nice clean glass for you to enjoy on site. But we were here for "Puckerfest" and so bellied up to the bar (just before the crowd came it turns out) and ordered a round to pass and share. I have to say, I was not that impressed. The beers were sour, for sure, but it reminded me why I don't generally like Belgians. Meh.

And so, "Puckerfest" completed, we took our trunk full of bottles home to enjoy (and record in our little nerd books) and spent the evening continuing to sample. But the hands down winner for the day was the "Duchesse de Bourgogne" by all judges--a rare feat in both my house and my brother-in-laws. But at $11 for a 750ml bottle, this will be a rare treat indeed. "Leafer Madness (2009 Fresh Hop Edition)" by Bear Valley (in Onterio, OR of all places) was in second place, and fresh hop beers are some of my favorite. A "fresh hop" is one the brewery brews using hops the same day they are harvested. I find it gives a great aroma and flavor. Bear Valley even has a video of them harvesting the very hops that went into the bottle we drank. Pretty cool. It's also 9% ABV. Hoppy and warm. Mmmm....

I'm pretty proud of our little team and how we started out by heading to Portland as a way to break up a pretty sad week with a death and a funeral and managed to turn it into a full-fledged beer adventure. We celebrated "Oregon Craft Beer Month" in true Oregon Craft Beer style, and now can all head back to less beerly-enlightend places of the country (Spokane, WA and Manassas, VA) with the lingering taste of fresh Willamette Valley hops still tingling the backs of our throats (and recorded in extraordinary detail in our little books.) I just wish the bike-bar was coming along.

Emerging Missional Conversation

2010-04-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

So this weekend I'll be presenting a workshop entitled "The Emerging Missional Conversation" at the Eastern Washington/Idaho Synod Assembly in Boise. It should be a good time. Here's a link to the materials I'm stealing all my content from (which will also be on a handout).

http://pubpastor.blogspot.com/p/emerging-missional-links.html

Sinners, whores, and other friends of Jesus: A conversation

2010-04-14T15:09:00.001-07:00

So I'm meeting up with some folks at the Balefire Bar in Everett, WA tonight and thought I'd make it an open invite. Since the folks that are coming already will likely be talking about church (and because I came up with this great title) I thought I'd call this little meetup: "Sinners, whores, and other friends of Jesus: A conversation" and that the topic could be "What I hate about church". Everybody is welcome.

Who: you
What: beer and deep conversation (or whatever)
When: tonight (4/14) at 8pm
Where: http://www.balefirebar.com/
Why: this is my idea of fun

Why Lutherans Can't Evangelize

2010-02-28T15:23:00.001-08:00

A little blog comment I wrote is making the rounds. "Pretty Good Lutherans" posted on the interchange with David Housholder I wrote about in my last post. Pretty cool. Check it out.

Another Blog Length Blog Comment

2010-02-24T01:11:00.001-08:00

Ok, so I once again posted a comment to another blog that really could have been a blog post of its own. The blog post in question is entitled "Why Lutherans Can't Evangelize" by David Housholder. Here's the link to his original post, and here is my reply.

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I find a lot in this that is really helpful, and a lot that I think is not so helpful (kind of a both/and thing for me). I’ll start with the good news.

I think this statement is quite accurate: “The Lutheran Confessions were not written to define how to reach the lost. They were written to defend the new Evangelical faith against a Roman Christianity which was organizing to resist the Reformation.” To try to get them to do something they were not meant to do is not helpful. Do they lay out a theology that can include mission? Certainly. Was that what they were trying to do–not really. So asking them questions about how to do something that wasn’t really the concern of the era doesn’t help much. No matter how hard I search, Deuteronomy just does not help me set the clock on my microwave. But I do think Luther et al were interested in the question “How do we turn ‘Christians’ into disciples?” which I think may be the question to get at first before we focus too hard on the “now go and make more disciples.”

I like your description of the three eras of Lutheran mission in America. I’ve thought about this before in the following pattern of missional purpose:
Phase 1: Find all the Lutherans
Phase 2: Make more Lutherans
Phase 3: Where are all the Lutherans? (Go back to phase 1)

This has been the functional Lutheran missiology in America for several hundred years, and actually, its worked well enough for us. But its just plain not working anymore. It worked in an era where people stayed close to home, had strong family and ethnic ties, and lived in a culture that assumed church participation for all (upstanding) citizens. That’s a world we don’t live in anymore. And so we’ve dropped the ball on mission and pretended that this will keep working. Let’s face it Lutherans, I know we think the young people we confirmed will be coming back once they have kids, the reality is that many of them have grandkids now, and at some point we need to figure out what we are going to do now.

So now on to the parts I don’t agree so much with:

While Lutherans may not have a functional eschatology that fits into current evangelical/pentecostal frameworks I find it hard to support the claim that we have no eschatology at all. Are we thinking all the time about being raptured up in the air? Hardly. But there is much more to eschatology that that. I’m a fan of a Pannenberg style proleptic understanding of eschatology–which I think makes the kind of sense to the people you are wanting to proclaim the gospel to. God created the end first, and draws us towards that ultimate fulfillment. Jesus is the presence of that future reality in our midst, and the cross becomes the “hinge point” moment where this is realized fully for all time. The whole world has already been reconciled to God (proleptically) in Jesus. It’s just taking the whole world a while to realize that and live accordingly. I, for one, am trying to live that all out now because it works better than not. So I follow Jesus. Its not that “accepting Jesus” gets me a “get out of jail free” card or extra points towards that prize (or that the trapdoor opens at the pearly gates if I haven’t done it in time) its just that the Jesus revealed something true about the universe–that it has been reconciled to God already. So why aren’t we living accordingly? And living in this reality, following Jesus, is not only good for me, its good for my neighbor whom I am now free to serve because I know how this movie turns out. Doesn’t get much more Lutheran than that.

I think Luther wasn’t so worried about the end times because either a) we are in them now or b) they we are not and they’ll come later. And really, what difference would it make. Plant your tree, live your life, love your neighbor. I tend to think Luther’s Antichrist stuff about the pope was more for dramatic effect (he was already under threat penalty of death by the pope, so he might as well go for broke). And I think he got kind of pissed off.

I’m also not taken with your claim that the answer is to become more like the Pentecostals. Not that I think that’s wrong–its certainly a fine way to live out one’s Christian faith–but I don’t think it will really become the driving force of Lutheran ways of doing things. Neither will an emphasis on conversion-decision, which is really based in a modern notion of faith coming through intellectual assent. The basic understanding of a conversion-decision assumes that if one just laid out the truth claim in the right way (“four spiritual laws”, the “bridge”, or more blatant attempts to literally “scare the Hell out of people”) that rational people would go “Oh, I get it. Yes of course. Jesus. Why didn’t I see it before?”

The trouble is that many people today say “Yes, I get Jesus. You Christians, though. Not so much.” In the modern world people were looking for the most right truth claim they could find (or institution holding such a truth claim) to stake their life on. Post modern people really aren’t looking to buy into the big plan. We’ve seen GM go down the tubes with our grandparents pension plans. And so too the church, leaving our grandparents (and us) to spiritually fend for ourselves.

I’ll also agree with your claim that we Lutherans don’t have an articulated theology of mission (we haven’t really done our good homework on this one, yet) but that doesn’t imply that it is impossible. I think there is a real possibility for a very Lutheran (very confessional Lutheran) theology of mission that is richer than anything we could copy off of Melanchthon’s test while the teacher wasn’t looking.

Lutheran missiology starts, where everything else does, in Baptism. God’s redeeming action and ever-present promise given to and for us even though we don’t deserve it and had nothing to do with getting it. That promise manifests itself throughout our lives in vocation–and in particular a call to love one’s neighbor in the real world. Baptismal vocation lived out fully (for example, as Jesus did) is contagious and transformative. It’s the kind of counter cultural love that makes people stop and say “Whatever those crazy Christians have got, I need that for my life too.” We’ve (Christians in general I think) have done a really poor job of living in such a way that our lives proclaim the Good News of Jesus and so we’ve had to resort to turning evangelism into tricks and gimmicks, strong arm techniques, or just plain not caring about our neighbor and ignoring the call to “make disciples”.

A gospel shaped life lived together in community that organically draws others in is how the Christian movement began (I don’t remember any stories of Jesus asking “Have you accepted me as your personal Lord and Savior?”) It’s how it spread throughout the world and (even in a nominally Christian culture) I think its how Christians actually found themselves as followers of Jesus. We Lutherans actually have plenty of theology to make this work, we’ve just done a poor job of talking about it, and an even worse job of putting it into practice.

But I think you are right that younger people today are hungry for just the kind of faith conversation Lutheran ways of talking about God lead to. Luther lived in “in between” times just as we did–and though the authors of the confessions and those that followed the first wave of the Reformation would eventually use them to draw distinctions rather than connections–the original impulse of the Lutheran movement was to help the Church move into a new era together. And that’s a threshold we are standing on once again. I think the Lutheran church could lead the way in this new Reformation.

Will it happen through Pentecostal leaning Lutherans? Perhaps, but that’s not where I’m putting my chips. But I do think it will happen through Lutherans who reclaim the real power of the Spirit that calls us into the world that God loves. And I’m with Chris who commented above. Here we are, forgiven sinners blessed with a theology of abundant grace. We are sitting on a whole pile of what the struggling people in our neighborhoods are dying to get a hold of. And we’re refusing to share it. “When did we see you hungry, or thirsty or a stranger?” When indeed.

Notice Name and Nurture with the Methodists--Part 3

2010-02-20T16:29:00.000-08:00

It's slightly embarrassing to say that the last two night sleep on camp bunk bed mattresses have been some of the best night's sleep I've had in a long time (I've got little kids, though, remember?). But it's not at all embarrassing to say that the past two days of conversation have been some of the best in a long time as well. The process of sharing deep and often quite personal stories, and learning how to help one another in drawing out and crafting those stories, has been really rewarding. I feel like I know the folks in this room much better than our 48 hours together would suggest. Its exciting to me to think about where these Methodist congregations take the material we've engaged these past two days.

Today's content is to get at how we go about facilitating this “Season of Practice” in our congregations, and community organizing practices lay at the heart of the “how” of this. But we spent a fair amount of time this morning debriefing what we had learned and exploring together why it is important. It's clear I'm not the only one for whom this process has been personally meaningful and others are also excited about the ways in which VoCARE practices might begin to transform their congregations and how they relate to the young people among them. And its also clear that there is more to these practices than simply a program for improving the number of pastors emerging from congregations. There is something in this process, in these stories and this way of being Church together, that could have deep and profound implications for all of our communities.

I'm slightly disappointed as I leave this gathering because I know that the timing is not right for my congregation to engage this process right now, and it also seems to me that a moment has passed for our cluster of Lutheran congregations in Spokane to engage in it together either. But I'm hopeful that there is some way, and some place that these Vocation Care practices can take root among Lutherans and among congregations I'm connected to. And since the training this fall I've already begun to engage in the story-telling practices, both inside and outside of my congregation. And I'm struck at the way in which this focus on call and a community that nurtures call is resonating with people outside of organized religion. When I've described this process, this curriculum, this project or just asked the sort of questions that lead to story telling with my non-church connected friends, they have gotten really excited. It seems like everyone is asking questions about call, and that the answers out there are just not cutting it. I've once again caught a vision for a transformed Church that takes vocation seriously, and becomes a community that deeply nurtures callings for all people—young and old, those inside and those outside—and releases them for the sake of the world. It's exciting to wonder about where this journey will take me next.

For now it's taking me back on the ferry and then back to my parents house to pick up my little ones who (hopefully) will sleep most of the 5 ½ hours back to Spokane. It's been a great journey with the people of FTE, with my Methodist brothers and sisters, and with the Spirit into the deep question of how do we nurture call within our congregations for the sake of the world. And something tells me this journey is only beginning.

Notice Name and Nurture with the Methodists--Part 2

2010-02-19T16:28:00.000-08:00

We're spending much of today telling (and honing) the story of “Why we are here.” Here's a version of the story I'm telling.

I first learned of The Fund for Theological Education when I was a first year student in seminary. I found out that this group (that I had never heard of) was giving out $5000 “Ministry Fellowships” to seminary students. I applied and ended up getting one. Part of the fellowship was a conference of all the recipients—young soon-to-be-pastors from all manner of denominations and from all cross the country. This was one of my first experiences of the “capital C” Church—the vast interconnected (and yet at the same time fractured) fellowship of followers of Jesus. And in the stories of my ecumenical peers I heard many of the same hopes and dreams for ministry, for leading communities of disciples of Jesus, and for the institution/communion/fellowship/body we call the Church. It was a world widening and mind opening experience for me, and one that would shape my seminary experience at the similarly ecumenical Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.

That summer I spent my time (and that $5000) on a study/research/immersion experience where I toured Luther sites in Germany as I studied his life and spent time in the intentional worshiping communities of Taizé in France and Iona in Scotland. It was a journey to the roots of my faith—my Lutheran denominational roots and my spiritual roots that I traced to these two communities whose worship materials and methods were important parts of my faith journey. In my conversations with the folks from FTE it became clear to me that this organization placed a high value on young people in ministry, and were dedicated to finding ways to nurture and further that call. And they invited me into a deeper and broader Church world than I'd imagined up until that point. Thanks to FTE my experience of the Christian movement became global and ecumenical—not just in theory but in actual experience.

And it's no wonder then, that years later I'd apply to FTE for funding for a project that my congregation (in conjunction with several others in our area) was embarking on to connect more deeply with younger people. Together with a colleague, I spent many hours crafting a grant proposal for FTE's “Calling Congregations” project—seeking ways to nurture vocation with young people. It turned out, however, that FTE would reject my grant proposal. But through the process I was able to get to know some of the staff who found interest in working with our cluster of congregations in a different way—on something that was just emerging from their work with congregations called “Notice, Name, and Nurture”. We'd planned a cluster training (like the one I'm attending right now) that fell through, but as soon as I caught wind of what it was that FTE was working on with this “VoCARE” concept—I knew it was something I needed to be a part of. This fall I found myself in Atlanta as a “friend of the process” with some East Coast churches being trained. And here I am, surrounded by United Methodists (our new full communion partners, I might add) learning about “Nurturing Vocating Care in Congregations.” Again I'm finding through FTE a depth, breadth, and ecumenicisity in the Church that is life giving.

I'm really quite excited about the curriculum FTE has developed to help congregations embrace their callings as centers for vocation nurturing for all Christians. As a Lutheran, the theological concept of vocation is near and dear to my heart and to what it means to me to be a Christian. What is so spectacular about the material FTE has developed is how it takes this core Christian concept and gives it flesh in such a way that leaders (and whole congregations) can embrace it and put it to work in their settings—so that it can spread. And its clear that is translates across denominational lines as well. They've tapped into a particularly accessible expression of how to help congregations (and Christians in congregations) connect to the calling God has for them in the world, and to use that to live lives of deeper meaning and significance. This is potentially Church changing stuff—and if Church changing in the right ways, world changing.

The methods we are learning here are not particularly ground breaking. All of this is really rooted in simple story-telling and story-listening. The stories revolve around some variation of “Tell me about a time when you felt like what you were doing was what you were meant to be doing” or “Why do you care about nurturing call with young people?” It's a process that simply leads a congregation into being an intergenerational place of story sharing, story valuing, and story living. But as those of us who have been through the immersion-style training will tell you, once you get at these really powerful stories of faith in our lives—and once you experience others deeply listening to your most sacred stories—something powerful happens. Community is built. Faith is deepened. Vocation is nurtured. Christ is encountered in the other.

And it challenges the heck out of folks like me, a leader of a Christian faith community who has spent years reflecting on and developing my own sense of vocation and purpose in the world, because it calls us to take really seriously the callings of ALL of our people, and especially the young people and to take seriously the call of Christian congregations to be the place where this sort of thing happens naturally all the time. What is so exciting to me about this is that this sort of process gets at the very questions that my generation is asking—deep questions about meaning and purpose and finding ones place in the universe. And the fact that the Church might just well have the resources to help a generation (all the generations really) get in touch with who they are and what they are called to be about in the world—we'll that's just plain thrilling. Could a generation who has largely written off the institution of the Church as irrelevant (or worse) find meaning and purpose through deep intergenerational communities of Christian faith and practice? I think so, and I think these VoCARE practices are a really straightforward way to get closer to that way of being the Church in the world.

Notice Name and Nurture with the Methodists--Part 1

2010-02-18T16:25:00.000-08:00

I've been asked by the staff of The Fund for Theological Education to blog my expereince of the Notice Name and Nurture “VoCARE” training here at Camp Indianola on Whidbey Island in Washington State. Let me say first, I'm a bit of an anomaly here. First, because I'm a Lutheran surrounded by Methodists. And second because I'm here not in the same capacity of the other participants—who are being trained to lead VoCARE practices in their congregations. I'm here instead because I'm interested in helping put together a similar training among Lutherans. And, this is my second time through this sort of training (that time as an interloper too). But key to this VoCARE training is narrative, so I'm going to start with the story of today instead of continuing these preliminaries.

I woke up this morning in Spokane, WA, which, according to Google is 315 miles from “Camp Indianola” where the retreat/training is being held. My morning began with loading up my children in the car so that I could drop them off with their grandparents who live somewhat near the camp. It pretty quickly became apparent that this little adventure might not go through as planned, when my father called at 7am with the announcement that he had spiked a serious fever in the night and might not be able to watch the kids after all. Telling a 4 year old that the trip to grandma and grandpa's is off just minutes before departure is pretty much the makings of a disaster, so we decided to make the journey even if it meant just staying and helping take care of grandpa. Then while loading the luggage, my two year old managed to find the Children's Motrin in the suitcase I wasn't loading, get through the “childproof” cap (HA!), and pour herself several doses all in the 45 seconds I was outside. One call to poison control later (unlike me, they were reassuringly not very concerned) and we were on our way—5 and a half hours to my parents to drop off the kids, another 30 to the ferry dock—where I missed the ferry I'd meant to get on and so would be late to arrive.

Now I generally use my kids as an excuse for my lateness (and more often than not they are a major factor in it) but the truth is the reason I was late for my ferry (and the conference) was on account of a choice I made. When I got to my parents house and got my kids situated for their visit, my dad pulled out a beat up manila envelope full of old photos he'd found somewhere or other, and began to show them to my four year old and telling the stories of “When grandpa was your age.” And though I knew I'd likely be late because of it, I could not pass up a moment that had the possibility of being a holy one (as it turned out to be). And so the three of us sat there, three generations, looking at photos I had never seen, and hearing stories I'd never heard. It seemed forced to leave an intergenerational story telling session to go to a conference about facilitating intergenerational story telling sessions and so I lingered. And it warms my heart to know that my daughter and her grandpa continued with the photos and stories after I left.

I made it to the ferry, and, as if it were a heavenly voice saying “You have done the right thing for this time and place” I was blessed with the kind of sunset that only happens over the Puget Sound—gazing across the water as the sun sinks slowly over the Olympics bathing everything around in amazing shades of blue, purple, and pink. And suddenly the day's somewhat arduous journey melted into a glorious evening prayer painted across the sky. I breathed it in, a 360 panorama of God's clear presence in the world, got back in my car when we landed and drove down a strange and winding road to arrive at the place where I had been called to go.

I tell you this story for two reasons. First, good pilgrimage stories go something like this one—and the journey to the destination is a key part of the experience. And second, I tell you this story to make you wonder why I would trek 300 miles with two preschool children, and continue onward despite many reasons to just call with my regrets and stay at home (or at least at my folks' house). The choices I've made today reveal something about what is important to me—and are connected to why I'm interested in the work of The Fund for Theological Education and their Calling Congregations initiative.

Lent Worship Space Transformation

2010-02-15T20:37:00.000-08:00

For the season of Lent my congregation is experimenting with some bold (for us) worship styles and have begun transforming our worship space to get ready for them. We're moving the altar down to the middle of the floor, which means we needed to get the pews out of the way. We're putting the first 6 rows on either side in storage and have replaced them with chairs so we can be semi "in the round" around the table where the Bible, communion elements, and the Baptismal font will be centered. The idea is that we are journeying in the wilderness, but God remains at the center.

Up where the altar used to stand is a 3D art piece. A gravel path starts on the floor and then goes back into the wall and over the mountains in the background. Rocks and trees and tumbleweeds help give that "desert journey" effect for our theme--which follows the lectionary readings for the season of Lent. Each week we'll add a bit to the art through some creative interactive things.

We're experimenting with more "emergent" forms of interactive experiential worship while keeping the base form of the liturgy . We are also really trying to do what many emergent churches haven't done, which is to find a way of worshiping that is truly intergenerational. Four generations are doing the planning (with a mind for our littlest ones too) and 5 generations are participating in the creating of the space.

Here's some photos, and a longer explanation is below.

Young Connor taking up his cross

Five generations of Bethlehem members helping out (including me, I'm taking the photo)

Emma got to cut out little trees. She thought this was the best thing ever.

The path begins to emerge over the hills.

The front rows of pews are in storage.

And now chairs (and an Old Rugged Cross for Ash Wednesday)

A longer explanation (from our newsletter)

At the annual meeting a few weeks ago, we heard a statistic about declining demographics in the ELCA nationally that identified the date 2046 as the day the ELCA “turns out the lights” unless major change and renewal take place. During that same meeting we adopted a resolution “that we at Bethlehem Lutheran Church commit to become the “leading edge” of what the ELCA church of 2046 might be should it survive, and we will experiment with what that future might be as part of our continuing ministry together, thus becoming an exciting example right here in the heart of our own Synod.”

One of the questions our worship team has been has been asking for quite a while is “What will Lutheran liturgical worship look like a generation from now?” Lutheran scholars and teachers of worship and liturgy teach that worship is more than simply repeating a particular ancient pattern, but all that we do and say (in worship particularly) is meant to proclaim Christ. Worship is meant not only for us to passively receive Good News for ourselves, but to engage a community of faith in our calling to proclaiming Christ in word and deed in the world. Our worship team believes that Lutheran liturgy in the future will emphasize creativity, flexibility, and interactivity—while staying connected to the liturgical patterns that have helped the people of God encounter Christ in worship for nearly 2000 years. As part of this new commitment to becoming the “leading edge” of the Lutheran church, we will be beginning to experiment with some new ways of proclaiming Christ in worship.

During the season of Lent (which begins with Ash Wednesday on Feburary 17) we will be on a wilderness journey in our worship gatherings. Like God’s people who left behind the difficult (yet reassuringly stable) life slavery in Egypt, we will be leaving behind some things as well. Our comfortable way of encountering God on Sunday mornings will be disrupted a bit symbolized by the moving of furniture—the altar, the pulpit, the font, the pews—but we will center ourselves around the presence of God at the heart of our lives even as we journey into the unknown. In their wilderness wanderings, God’s people were reminded that God journeys with them, and in the wilderness God brings us together to support one another. During Lent we will encounter God in different ways, through movement, through conversation, through the worship space itself. And yet, at the core will be the ancient pattern of the liturgy, and some “touchstones” that remind us that we are not cut off from God’s action with us and with God’s people in the past. Here’s some of what you can expect:

Our worship gatherings in Lent will continue to follow the basic four part pattern of ancient liturgy: Gathering, Word, Meal, Sending. Within each section will be something to ground us, to keep us centered, to bear the wisdom of tradition into our lives today. In the Gathering we will gather as Christians have for nearly 2000 years “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” and we will sing a hymn from our list of “Old Favorites” to remind us that we carry with us the faith that has brought us this far on our journey. During the Word we will hear the ancient texts of the Scripture proclaimed and we will confess our faith as Christians have for nearly 2000 years with the Apostles Creed. During the Meal as Christians have done for nearly 2000 years we will proclaim Christ in, with, and under the bread and the wine with the words of institution Jesus spoke at the last supper (“In the night in which he was betrayed…”) and will pray together the prayer he taught his disciples, which we call the Lord’s Prayer. And during the sending we will receive the blessing that God’s people have received since the wanderings in the dessert (“The Lord bless you and keep you…”) and will be sent forth as Christians have for nearly 2000 years, to embody the Good News of Jesus in the world.

In and among this framework we will be experimenting with some different and creative ways to embody and proclaim the message God has for us through these 5 weeks. The first several sections of pews will be removed and the altar table brought into the middle of the sanctuary as a symbol of the disruption and discomfort that comes as we may a new journey into the unknown of the wilderness. And yet, on this table now at the center of our gathering, the Bible, the baptismal font, and the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper will remind us of God’s presence in the midst of our wanderings. Around the altar table we will gather in chairs facing one another, to remind us that we are not on this journey alone. During the Gathering section we will speak together about the journey we are on through a responsive litany. During the Word we will encounter God through our neighbor as we interact in various ways with one another. During the Meal we will participate in the proclamation in various ways with symbolic actions and movements. During the Sending we will be sent forth in a number of creative ways with the charge to not let the encounter with God end as we leave our gathering place, but to carry it with us into the rest of the world and into the rest of our lives.

This season of Lent will be a time of stretching as we lean into the future God has in store for us. It will challenge us, disrupt us, and perhaps disturb us. But we will again and again be reminded that God has promised to journey with us even into the most frightening of wilderness experiences. Like the ancient people wandering in the desert dreaming of the Promised Land, we will continue to confess “God shows the way!”

Poem

2010-01-17T14:37:00.001-08:00

This poem was posted as a comment on the blog "Pretty Good Lutherans" today by someone named Timothy. It was too cool not to share (and I wish I had it for worship today!). It's related to the Gospel lesson for Epiphany 2c: John 2:1-11 about Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana.

Yes, God’s grace is enough!
It looks weak
Pathetic
Naked
Humiliated
Dangling by a thread
Held up by rusty nails of a cross

This morning we heard what happened on the Third Day
In an impoverished hick town called
Cana in Galilee

All the residents beaten down
Party over way too soon
Ran out of wine
Joy down the drain
When one momma told her Boy
You gotta do somethin’

And what the Cana of Galilee-ites saw
Revealed the mind and heart of God
Grace, grace, and more grace
180 gallons of swiftly, flowing, moving grace
This was the first clue
Evidence of the identity of Jesus

The ultimate clue was still to come
Third Day resurrection
Following messy, nasty, earthquake death
Yes, grace is enough
And grace will win!

And the ELCA
She is at her best
When the grace she has received overwhelms her
And spills over and drenches others regardless of who they are

Graced people, grace people
And it must be believed in order to be seen
Amen

The demise of the Emergent Church?

2010-01-01T09:37:00.000-08:00

I posted this as a comment on Tony Jones' blog, but realized it was long enough to be its own blog post, so I'm reposting it here. Tony Jones and Andrew Jones (aka Tall Skinny Kiwi or TSK--also no relation) were having a blog conversation about the "demise of the Emergent Church" that started with TSK's post to which Tony responded.

When I read TSK’s post the other day, my sense was that he wasn’t talking about something “dying” but more like a major shift–and it seems like that is something that you (Tony) seem to be recognizing as well. The question seems to be “How will whatever this new thing that has emerged emerge in another generation of leaders/communities?” I think this is a key one if the Emergent/Emerging Church is to be more than many critics claim it to be: a “style” based moment that appeals to hipster 20 somethings. And to be fair, many churches have (as Joshua Price so aptly commented above) have taken the style and pasted it on top of the same old substance–hardly an example of “emergence”. But other’s have taken the substance and incarnated that in ways that seem a far cry from the hipster model–and yet share so much in common.

I wonder of the “death of the emergent church” and its so-called coopting (where that means something other than a style cut-and-paste) has more to do with the big shift Phyliss Tickle talks about in “The Great Emergence”. The reason the frontliners are seeing the movement as “dead” is because in many ways it has actually worked. The Great Emergence has begun, and those who have blazed the trail have opened up the whole wilderness for the rest of us to follow. But the trouble is, we’re not going to do it the same way as the originators–the radical badasses who confronted opposition at every turn. Perhaps someone more versed in feminist theory than I am could draw comparisons between the generational “waves” of the feminist movement as it shifted from the suffragettes to the bra-burners to the power-suits to the choosing-to-be-stay-at-home-moms. Movements evolve (emerge?) and to have deep societal impact by nature have to morph over time. Even when they go in directions the trailblazers never intended. But, we must remember, the Church (emergent or otherwise) is not ours, but God’s–and we are only players in God’s great drama. Who knows what it is that God intends this whole experiment to turn into? (and, really, only God gets to say “its over”)

This is why I’ve come to like the term Alan Hirsch uses in The Forgotten Ways: “Emerging Missional”. I’m seeing in both the mainline and evangelical circles I’m in, a refocus on mission that I believe has been sparked in a huge way by the Emerging/Emergent movement, much in the same way that the charismatic/holiness movement of the early 20th Century brought the Holy Spirit back into the forefront of American Christianity across denominations or how Vatican II opened up liturgical renewal way beyond the Roman Catholic Church. But in all of these examples what this looks like in actual incarnated forms in communities is so amazingly different its hard to see how they are all connected–but I believe they are.

Emergent Air Force?

2009-12-05T08:31:00.000-08:00

Fairchild Air Force Base was not a place I was really expecting to encounter emergent ministry. It's not because I hold some sort of prejudice against the military. On the contrary, the men and women who serve in uniform (and support those in uniform) have, I think, some of the toughest jobs there are--and I am grateful for their dedicated service. The chaplains who serve our military folks do some of the most amazing work possible--bringing the Gospel into places that need it and to people desperate to hear a word of comfort and wholeness. But the military structure, as I understand it, is one of the most institutional constructions on this planet--hierarchical, structured, resistant to change, based on power, control, and influence. Just the sort of environment in which anything "emergent" seems to have no chance of survival.

My friend Bob serves as a chaplain contractor with a responsibility for "Single Airmen's Ministry" (the term "airmen" is gender-neutral he tells me) at Fairchild. He got this gig about six months ago, and has been really excited about it, which surprised me a bit at first. Bob (though a self proclaimed "boomer") lives and breathes post-modern, missional, emergent type of stuff. So this "military chaplain" thing seemed a bit surprising, though I knew he'd do a great job at it. But then, Bob described his "setting" and I started to get it. This week I got the chance to see it in person.

While the rest of the chaplains have offices in the chapel (a large, visible, churchy looking building you can't miss when you drive onto the base) Bob's office is tucked away in a little house right in the middle of a large circle of dorms where most of the 18-22 year old single airmen live. They call this the "Airmen's Ministry Center" and they just recently set up a Facebook page for themselves. When you walk in there is a table of books and materials. I noticed Don Miller's "Blue Like Jazz" right away (the last copy, says Bob, the airmen love it) and some perfect-for-keeping-with-you-size Bibles with plastic camo covers (I almost snagged one). To the left is a computer lab and off to the right is a living room with a giant flat screen, couches, and last night's (or this afternoon's?) dirty pizza boxes. Bob's office is right there in the mix. And they've got Wi-Fi (which I guess the dorms don't), so the place is generally hopping.

Now, there are a couple of ways this could go. In what I might expect, Bob's position would be more or less like a youth director--a program provider--who specializes in the religious goods and services that young people today enjoy. Ol' Bob might be expected to show up with his guitar, sing some Jesus camp songs, lead a trip or two and call that ministry. And, in fact, Bob's job description does include trips and retreats, events and mixers. But underlying this is a real sense from Bob that the Air Force Chaplain Corps is pretty clear that "ministry as usual" just isn't gonna fly anymore. What he does is not just a dumbed-down (or coolness added) religious program. The coffee shop, the TV, the trips, etc are all simply relational entry points for him to connect to the lives of these young people, and help them connect with one another--and through both to deepen spiritually. Here's how Bob describes what he's up to:

The Air Force Chaplain Corps has recognized that these 19 – 22 year-olds are caught up in the cultural shifts of contemporary society. They are unlikely to seek answers from traditional church structures. An alternative, a “third place,” like our Airman Ministry Center, is more conducive to ministry to these young post-moderns. And so, I spend half my day and many weekends hanging out with young adults, caring for them. I am based in an “Airman’s Lounge,” which is a living-room and wifi-hotspot surrounded by the singles’ dorms.

I would welcome your prayers for this service to young Airmen. While caring for people of any faith, and no faith at all, I believe the time is coming to see the gathering of an Airman community of Christian faith. Instead of building walls or pulling back from shop-mates and fellow dorm-dwellers, a group of believers should come together, and live out their covenant pilgrimage with God in the midst of the larger base community. For that to happen requires a birth from above.

The day after Bob called to invite me to check out what he was up to I was reading Reggie McNeal's (fantastic) book "Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church", in which he describes some work he's done with the Army Chief of Chaplains. McNeal has this to say:

Historically, the role of the chaplain has been to serve as a representative of the faith that people took with them into military service. However, the spiritual landscape among service personnel has changes significantly, particularly among younger recruits. Many of these soldiers are coming into service with no spiritual formation or religious affiliation.

He then goes on to describe a bit what this looks like and concludes:

It occurred to me only later that this same challenge applies to church leaders in North America. Most have been equipped to serve as institutional representatives for faith that people already possess. The challenge is to connect with a culture that is unacquainted with the Good News of Jesus. The default position for church leaders in North America is that of institutional represntatives... Leaders of a kingdom movement see themselves in a far different light. They talk about God, not just about church. And when they talk about God, they don't use the discussion as a way to get around to marketing their church.

What McNeal, and Bob (and the military chaplain leadership it seems) are on about is that business as usual is just not cutting it for the emerging generation. Recruiting people into our institutions and programs just simply can't pass for ministry and mission any more. And I'd bet if there are statistics on such things, this has been a growing trend within the regular chaplain ministry as well. If the same trends that function in the civilian churches hold, the 18-22 year olds simply aren't connecting AT ALL to the programs and structures and "the way we've always done things"--but its seems very likely that the generations before them have been connecting less and less. But unlike much of the institutional church, even in my limited in encounter with it, the Air Force chaplaincy system seems to get this--to understand that if we don't re-tool we're going to miss out on a whole generation of people. And perhaps, already have.

It gives me great hope that the US military, that institution that defines institution, is catching on to what is happening among emerging generations. I wonder, though, what makes them more willing to change, to address ministry differently, and to reach out to this disconnected population than many of our church institutions? Why is the Air Force spending time, effort, and energy investing in chaplains like Bob, setting them up in "coffee shop" settings, and empowering them to do this kind of relationship based ministry and spiritual deepening when our churches by and large aren't? Is the military more concerned about the spiritual health of young people than our churches are?

Perhaps this is not so crazy 130 years later

2009-11-14T15:59:00.000-08:00

I was digging through some old papers my parents had sent me, and found an article that mentions my great-great grandfather, Rev. Torsten Moen (whose first name is my middle name, though nobody seems sure how it was really spelled). The article talks about a man named John Henry Peterson, from St. Cloud, MN one of the few (white) residents of that area in the 1870s which was inhabited largely by the Chippewa. Here's a bit of the article:

"Peterson tried to gather the scattered pioneers for worship and Sunday school in their homes. Peterson and a few other Scandinavians met in the home of Andrew Johnson on March 17, 1879 to organize a congregation. They named themselves the Sandvikens Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Congregation and Pastor Torsten Moen, a Norwegian missionary from Osakis, accepted a call to serve as their pastor. Moen, the head of 18 congregations, said he could only promise five or six visits a year. The congregation gathered in homes until 1888 when it constructed a small log church. In 1888, the congregation totaled 21 persons."

A few people organized themselves to be a church, and figured five or six visits a year from a pastor might help them do that better. They met in homes until they got kind of big for that, and found a way to all gather together. And so my great-grandfather rode from town to town checking in on these little communities (18 of them!) to see how these little groups of Jesus' disciples were getting on and helping them with whatever they needed--but clearly the mission and ministry didn't only happen when ol' T. Moen was in town. A network of house churches, followers of Jesus gathered together to be the church in the midst of an often hostile environment, sharing their lives and their gifts, and not worrying about all the many, many things that keep churches today from doing what we are called to do. Doesn't sound like such a bad model for 2009, now does it?

Oh, and 130 years later that little group of Swedes from a log cabin are still gathering as the followers of Jesus known as Gethsemane Lutheran Church.

November 10th

2009-11-10T16:07:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Martin Luther!

You really messed up the Church 500 years ago. May we who carry your name continue to be a force for reformation and transformation. I raise a glass of beer to you!

Called from brokenness

2009-11-07T18:06:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in a bar in the Salt Lake City airport and cannot resist the urge to post, simply because I am drinking a beverage named "Polygamy Porter". To make things even better, it has a slogan. Ready for it..."Why have just one?" And, since in finding the link above I found out it is only 4% ABV, I think I will have another.

But I'm on my way home from this conference about "vocation" and "call" so perhaps I should blog a bit more about that too.

One of the interesting things I'm starting to learn from hearing people's stories of not only "To what they feel called" but also those moments from their life story that led to those particular callings, is that they often result from some sort of brokenness or lack of support at some point in their lives. I'll use a public story as an example.

Jay Bakker is the son of Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker of televangelist fame. His story has been most recently made public through a documentary series entitled "One Punk Under God" (which I highly recommend adding to your Neflix queue). His dissatisfaction with the religious life he grew up in (and the subsequent and televised breakdown of his family) led him through a dark period in which he rejected his faith--and felt excluded from God. Now he's a pastor, but one quite unlike his famous father. You can hear his sense of call to this unique ministry in a bit of his bio from his church's website:

After witnessing firsthand the excommunicative treatment his family received from the church, Jay wanted nothing to do with God. And so began a new life filled with substances easily abused and nonstop partying created to mask the pain and suffering caused by this surreal rejection. Eventually, Jay was able to conquer his demons and made a personal decision to find out who God really was. What he discovered floored him – God wasn’t some judgmental, condemning deity sitting on a throne waving an angry fist in the direction of sinners – rather, he was an understanding God offering his gift of love and grace with no strings attached. For the first time Jay wasn’t being driven to Christ out of fear; he was being drawn to Christ through love.

As a result of this discovery, Jay started a church for those who feel rejected by traditional approaches to Christianity; this church is called Revolution. The idea behind Revolution is to show all people the unconditional love and grace of Jesus without any reservations due to their lifestyles or background, past or future. In the desire to bypass geographical boundaries, all Services are recorded and posted on the Revolution Church website to create an “online church for people who have given up on church.”

It's clear Jay's sense of call comes from his own hard experience, and what he wished had been available for him in the midst of it. Now he's devoted his life to helping others weather the same experiences he has, and find the support and community he longed for.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Jay's (and so many other's) sense of calling comes from their own deep pain, and a desire to help create the sort of world in which the sorts of things they have experienced don't become the life-ending problems they are for so many. I think of the sorts of "hero" calls one hears about: the kid that escaped the slums who comes back to start a youth center there, the young woman who experienced rape who volunteers to help girls foster self esteem, the man who grew up without a father in the home who now mentors teenage boys in his church, etc.

But I'm hearing this again and again in the more ordinary stories I'm hearing too. I have tended to think of call along the lines of "What gifts do I have that could be useful?" but this realization is helping me to see an added dimension of call which is "What wrong have you experienced that you are passionate to help right?" In many ways, I think the two are connected--and transforming a brokeness or hardship into a way to help other's through this might indeed be one of the most amazing gifts we have. It drives our passions and focuses our energy in ways that simple talents never will.

So, the question this raises is "What is your place of hardship that drives you to be passionate about what you are passionate about?" Might this be a place of call for you?

Are you called?

2009-11-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

I'm at a conference in Atlanta put on by The Fund for Theological Education through their "Calling Congregations" program. We're test running a process and a curriculum for helping congregations recenter themselves on the notion of "call"--what are we (individuals, communities, etc) called to do, and better yet, who are we called to be?

The basic premise is to foster the practice of story telling (and story listening) along with the asking of questions. This happens by first creating a space in which this can happen, and then by forming a community in that space that can evoke, pull out, and engage the deep life questions we are all asking (even if not out loud). FTE hopes that by helping our congregations get better at this practice (spiritual practice, really) that we will be better at helping our young people figure out how they are called. It emerged for them out of the recognition that there is a shortage of young people following calls to ordained ministry, but they realized that the problem was deeper than that--and that the way to get at the root questions was to help foster communities in which young people especially, but also the whole intergenerational range of folks, could explore, ponder, and discern callings in the world. As one of the facilitators has said, if the Church is not doing this work, what the heck are we doing? I tend to agree.

Pastor types talk a lot about "call" about the "call to ministry" or whatever. As part of my preparation to be a pastor I had to reflect at length (ad naseum) about "vocation," about my own sense of call, where it came from, what I think it meant, and what God had to do with it. People asked me repeatedly about how, where, when, and why I felt called. My seminary professors, a board of people from my synod, and finally the congregation which I'm serving all had to hear my sense of how God was calling me to ordained ministry, and say "Yep, we think this guy is called to be a pastor too." In my ordination I said out loud that I would consider the call of the church the call of God and do my best to live fully into that calling. Call, call, call. I'm steeped in it. And I believe that all of us are called to something, or many somethings.

But I wonder, do the rest of us (non clergy folk) think much about call? What does the word "call" or "vocation" used in this way even mean to you? Do you all out in the real world think about the things that you are up to as callings? And if you do, do you think of them as callings from God? How is your calling connected to, or separate from, the work you do? And, do we ever actually talk about this other than in the context of people who think they are called to be pastors? Would it help if we talked about this sort of thing more?

And (in the spirit of this conference I'm at) do you have a 2 minute story that illustrates how (or why, or when) you feel called? If you do, feel free to share it in the comments--and ask questions about one another's stories too if you are curious or want to know more.

Big Tent Church

2009-10-26T13:57:00.001-07:00

Images from our "Big Tent" Reformation Sunday worship and Oktoberfest

This was a joint service with Bethlehem Lutheran, Bethany Presbyterian, St. Paul's Lutheran, and Emmanuel Metropolitan Community Church. The offering (over $600) was given to Odyssey Youth Center for LGBTQA teens.

Seats for 270, mostly filled up later

Bagpipers who opened the service (thanks Presbyterians. The Lutherans retaliated with an accordion during the Oktoberfest part)

A big pile of communion bread, representing breads from all over the world.

I ruined my homebrew and had to buy a keg of Northern Lights Dunkel (which was amazing) for the party. My buddy Dave (on the left) from The Porch (a church in West Central Spokane) brought a keg of IPA they brewed in their community garden, with hops grown in the neighborhood. Thanks Dave for saving the day, and for making this event even more ecumenical (The Porch is affiliated with the Christian Missionary Alliance)

Sausage Church

2009-10-26T13:53:00.001-07:00

Sausage Church:

Making 150 lbs of sausage with Bethlehem Lutheran for our joint worship service this weekend. Notice at the generations mixing, passing wisdom down from one to another.

A great definition of what the Church should be (in dialogue form)

2009-10-26T12:46:00.001-07:00

(Stolen from my friend Skip)

This is a dialogue from a story by George MacDonald titled, Robert Falconer. In total it is a wonderful story. Falconer came from a very humble background as a shepherd, but he always had a deep desire to learn, and to know Christ. As an adult, with help from friends, he became a physician. He served as physician to the poorest of the poor in his city. He developed partnerships with other Christians to serve the poor. He met the young man he is in dialogue with here, and invited him to accompany him on his rounds. This takes place after they had made the rounds for the evening, and the young man asks Falconer, “Are you all a church?” To which Falconer responds, “No.” What you will read here is much along the lines of what I believe being the church means.

Are You A Church?

‘Are you a society, then?’ I asked at length.
‘No. At least we don’t use the word. And certainly no other society
would acknowledge us.’
‘What are you, then?’
‘Why should we be anything, so long as we do our work?’
‘Don’t you think there is some affectation in refusing a name?’
‘Yes, if the name belongs to you? Not otherwise.’
‘Do you lay claim to no epithet of any sort?’
‘We are a church, if you like. There!’
‘Who is your clergyman?’
‘Nobody.’
‘Where do you meet?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘What are your rules, then?’
‘We have none.’
‘What makes you a church?’
‘Divine Service.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘The sort of thing you have seen tonight.’
‘What is your creed?’
‘Christ Jesus.’
‘But what do you believe about him?’
‘What we can. We count any belief in him—the smallest—better
than any belief about him—the greatest—or about anything else
besides. But we exclude no one.’
‘How do you manage without that?’
‘By admitting no one.’
‘I cannot understand you.’
‘Well, then: we are an undefined company of people, who have
grown into human relations with each other naturally, through one
attractive force—love for human beings, regarding them as human
beings only in virtue of the divine in them.’
‘But you must have some rules,’ I insisted.
‘None whatever. They would cause us only trouble. We have nothing
to take us from our work. Those that are most in earnest, draw
most together; those that are on the outskirts have only to do nothing,
and they are free of us. But we do sometimes ask people to help
us—not with money.’
‘But who are the we?’
‘Why you, if you will do anything, and I and Miss St. John and
twenty others—and a great many more I don’t know, for every one
is a centre to others. It is our work that binds us together.’
‘Then when that stops you drop to pieces.’
‘Yes, thank God. We shall then die. There will be no corporate
body—which means a bodied body, or an unsouled body, left behind
to simulate life, and corrupt, and work no end of disease. We
go to ashes at once, and leave no corpse for a ghoul to inhabit and
make a vampire of. When our spirit is dead, our body is vanished.’
‘Then you won’t last long.’
‘Then we oughtn’t to last long.’
‘But the work of the world could not go on so.’
‘We are not the life of the world. God is. And when we fail, He
can and will send out more and better labourers into his harvest field.
It is a divine accident by which we are thus associated.’
‘But surely the church must be otherwise constituted.’
‘My dear sir, you forget: I said we were a church, not the church.’
‘Do you belong to the Church of England?’
‘Yes, some of us. Why should we not? In as much as she has faithfully
preserved the holy records and traditions, our obligations to
her are infinite. And to leave her would be to quarrel, and start a
thousand vermiculate questions, as Lord Bacon calls them, for which
life is too serious in my eyes. I have no time for that.’
‘Then you count the Church of England the Church?’
‘Of England, yes; of the universe, no: that is constituted just like ours,
with the living working Lord for the heart of it.’
‘Will you take me for a member?’
‘No.’
‘Will you not, if—?’
‘You may make yourself one if you will. I will not speak a word to
gain you. I have shown you work. Do something, and you are of
Christ’s Church.’
We were almost at the door of my lodging, and I was getting very
weary in body, and indeed in mind, though I hope not in heart.
Before we separated, I ventured to say,
‘Will you tell me why you invited me to come and see you? Forgive
my presumption, but you seemed to seek acquaintance with
me, although you did make me address you first.’
He laughed gently, and answered in the words of the ancient
mariner:—
‘The moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.’
Robert Falconer

Some thoughts on Original Sin

2009-10-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

My Twitter friend Randy (@rschatz56560) posted this tweet today: "Any #outlawpreachers want to try to explain the concept of 'original sin'? Grew up RC, now ELCA and I reject it, but am willing to learn." It's kind of hard to talk about original sin in 140 characters (though that would be a challenge worth taking up!) but I did want to respond. Here's the "sitting at the pub" version.

The first thing is what do we mean by "sin"? Most people (both inside and outside of Christianity) think of sin as "doing bad stuff" or "breaking rules" or "refusing to submit to the arbitrary authority of some paternalistic, sexist, cartoon diety that doesn't really exist for the purpose of keeping people in line and denying us the ability to flourish as the beautiful, wonderful, amazing people we are." Yes? So then, we say, of course we don't believe in "original sin". Babies are beautiful, wonderful, and not subject to the same sort of BS as the rest of us. Sure, all the rest of us get caught up in rule breaking but not the 10 minute old baby. How could they? Not only do they not know the rules, they don't have the mental development for such a conversation about breaking them to even make sense. And if sin were primarily about rule breaking, I'd tend to agree with you.

So we go to Adam and Eve, the original sin originals. God said "Don't eat this here apple" and passed a law. No matter how arbitrary it was, those humans should have followed it. He could have said, "Always wear a hat on Tuesdays" and they should have done that too. And why not? He basically told them "Live in this paradise, don't work, be naked all the time, and have lots of sex". Couldn't they have done this teensy weensy thing that God asked of them? But no, they couldn't and so they screwed it up for all eternity. And now because of this "original sin" the rest of us have to live in smog filled cites, work for the Man, cover our naughty bits, and (except for the 1960's) keep our sex lives quiet and to ourselves. That better have been one damn good apple, guys.

But that's not really what this story is all about, and it's not what original sin is all about. Because sin is not really about rule breaking at all. It's about being "curved in on ourselves" (incurvatus in se if you want to get all geekly Latin about it). Its not first and foremost about our actions, its about our primary view of the world. Which, most of the time, is our own belly buttons. The nasty stuff we do to one another (and ourselves) is the result of our own inwardness, our own self-centered world that really doesn't have much room for our neighbor or for God.

St. Augstine wrote (somewhere) about the deeper meaning of original sin with something along the lines of "We don't want God to be God. We want to be God." God created humans to be in relationship. Relationship with God, with each other, with all that is. God created us whole, where our will and God's will for us were one and the same. But God also created us with free will, we're not puppets, and we have the ability to choose to reject God. And we do. Again and again and again. Every day. Even when we are trying really hard not to (maybe especially when we are trying really hard not to). Even Jesus prayed "Not my will, but yours be done." Adam's sin was not doing something God told him not to do, but in putting himself above God, saying in effect "I don't need you to be God. I'm perfectly happy being God, thank you very much."

When I talk about sin with people who don't know our churchy jingo (and even with people who do) I like to use the word "brokenness" to talk about sin. Most people, even those who think they are pretty "sin free" will admit that they are broken in one way or another. And we'd be fools not to admit that the world is broken, that families are broken, that relationships all around us are fundamentally broken. And even the most ardent agnostic would likely say "If there is a God, that God certainly didn't intend for the world to be like THIS!". (and that may be why they are an agnostic in the first place.) And in fact, the world is not the way that God intended it to be. He created the world for wholeness, he created us for wholeness, and we (from the very beginning--hence "original") break the world, break one another, break ourselves. And even our attempts to make it better, to make ourselves better, are broken too and often end up doing more harm than good.

It's not just that individuals break rules (or don't) but you and I and our relationships and this crazy system we've come up with to live together and the whole of human existence is, deep down, fundamentally broken and not what God had in mind for us. And we don't have a clue how to put it back together again. And still, we're not willing to let God be God for us. We don't trust God to handle it, we want to do it ourselves. Adam, you dummy, why did you let the good life slip through your fingers just so you could do whatever the hell you wanted to do? And, for that matter, why do I?

The Good News is that, despite what many of us have been taught, God is actually not so worried about our rule breaking "sins" but in our inward curving that leads to them. God is interested in putting the world back together, in putting us back together, in making us whole. God calls us to curve upward and outward. But God doesn't force us, God invites us. Invites us to embrace this Kingdom of wholeness that most reject--to be people of Grace, people of trust, followers of Jesus. Jesus' will was the same as God's will--for himself, for others, for the whole world. It goes back to Luther's concept of "free will" which is not doing whatever you want to do (which is how most of us define it) but having what you want for yourself and the world be the same as what God wants for you and the world. To be truly free is to put ultimate trust in God, not in ourselves.

To paraphrase the Order for Confession from the Lutheran Book of Worship: We are stuck in our brokenness and cannot make ourselves whole. We have made God's world more broken, when God calls us to seek wholeness. But when we face our brokenness, God, who loves wholeness above all else, loves us in the midst of our brokenness too, and loves us all into wholeness.

A difficult sermon

2009-10-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

This Sunday I preached what I think may well have been the hardest sermon to preach in my life. The text was from Mark, and the rich man who is called to give up his wealth to follow Jesus (a call he rejects). The quesion I asked my congregation was "What is getting in the way of you following Jesus right now?" I also ask this of myself and share my answer.

Here it is.

Some tough questions for churches

2009-10-09T19:45:00.000-07:00

I've recently picked up again a book by Alice Mann published by the Alban Insitute entitled "Can Our Church Live? Redeveloping Congregations in Decline." In it she asks some questions from fellow Alban Institute colleage Ed White (and adds a few of her own).

I'd be interested in my churchly friends answers to these questions (and my former churchly, and non churchly friends too from their experiences with Christian communities).

Is your church primarily in the fellowship business?

Is your church primarily in the social action or social service business?

Is your church primarily in the music business?

Is your church primarily in the historic preservation business?

Is your church primarily in the baby-sitting business?

Is your church primarily in the landlord business?

Is your church primarily in the investment management business?

Or, is your church primarily in the calling people into discipleship and forming them in a life-changing faith business?

Frühschoppen

2009-10-03T07:38:00.000-07:00

I have a new favorite German word: Frühschoppen. It has narrowly won out over my long time favorite: Stinktier, which means "skunk", but literally is "stinky animal" and also the only recently discovered Glühbirne, which means "light bulb" but literally is "glowing pear." You have to hand it to the Germans for being infinitely practical in their use of language.

I encountered Frühschoppen in the following sentence: "For example, it's not uncommon to see German men gathering after church for Frühschoppen (morning pint), a Sunday breakfast bonding session over bread, cheese, cold cuts, and a Hefeweizen'" The Germans have a word for the beer you drink on Sunday morning after church. As my 18 month old daughter loves to say: "WOW!" Unlike my other favorite German words, Frühschoppen is extremely unpractical, and not only that, my Norwegian ancestors would have looked with distain upon the practice of drinking beer in the late morning after church itself (though they probably would have partaken, just with guilty consciences) and certainly would never have coined a word for it. They would have called it "Dad is off in the garage again, don't you know." Frühschoppen is so much more direct.

The sentence I quoted above came from a magazine called "Beer Northwest" which I picked up at the Balefire Wine Bar in Everett, where I took my wife to celebrate her 30th birthday while taking advantage of a day of free babysitting by my parents. This was Tauni's first visit to Balefire, thought I been several times on previous visits with my dad (who has a mug in their mug club with "Pastor Mark" engraved on it). It's actually the place people from my dad's church go to share a beer after church (though not for Frühschoppen, they go after the evening service). I thought Tauni would enjoy it because they have 24 wines on tap (preserved with Argon gas) and it has 12 good beer taps for me (and I didn't even know about the bacon wrapped dates--Tauni's favorite). If the Balefire existed in Spokane I think it would be our regular hang out--the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, no such thing exists in Spokane to my knowledge. Too bad, I'll have to have my Frühschoppen at home.

The other thing that doesn't exist in Spokane is a magazine entitled "Beer Northwest" (though it should). Some highlights from the Table of Contents: "Two Wheels and Three Sheets: The DIY style of bicycles and beer in Portland, Oregon--page 20", "Take me out to the Ballgame: Learn the best places to find craft beer inside the Northwest's ball parks--pg 30"' "To Lemon, or Not to Lemon: The nuances of American and German Hefeweizens--page 34" (where the quote above came from) and "I 'Brew': Your wedding day is one of the most exciting days of your life; the beer you brew for the day should be equally monumental--page 52". If I were going to make up a beer magazine, these were the sorts of headlines I'd come up with. Amazingly enough there were actual articles to go with them. And now I feel reassured about my habit rejecting the lemon that comes with Hefeweizen (it does ruin it you know, the Germans know this) during my Frühschoppen.

Response to Nestingen on "Being Unchurched"

2009-09-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

Rev. Dr. James Nestingen, professor emeritus from Luther Seminary and active with the WordAlone network these days, wrote an article for the WordAlone website about what the changes in the ELCA mean for him and others who disagree with allowing a variety of viewpoints in the ELCA on homosexuality. Here's his article: http://wordalone.org/docs/nestingen-joining-unchurched.shtml

I posted this link to my Facebook page with a comment about "Rev. Dr. Nestingen gets to the heart of it: The #ELCA was a bad idea all along. Three cheers for the Old ALC! Hmm..." which was meant to be ironic. A series of comments followed, some not catching my irony. I've now turned my response to Nestingen and my Facebook friends into this blog post:

My beef with Nestingen on this is not personal, but theological. My father studied with him back in his seminary days (to great acclaim) and my faith and love of the Lutheran Confessions surely owes a great debt to him.

Like many committed teachers, Nestingen has not published a whole lot of his work (which took place in classrooms over many decades). I used his writings and his theological approach to the Lutheran Confessional Writings as part of my MA Thesis (MA is in Systematic Theology, emphasis in Lutheran Confessional Theology). What I found as I analyzed the way he uses the documents is that he often intersperses American political philosophy and highly preferences one particular historical branch of Lutheranism which my family shares with him. It's a straigt line from the German Reformation to it's adoption in Norway (subscribing to the Augsburg Confession and Catechisms) to the United States via the Norwegian Synod (and some Haugean pietists thrown in from time to time) that kept Norwegian in worship long into the 20th Century, who formed the core of the ALC and had their stronghold in Luther Seminary (and St. Olaf and PLU). Nestingen again and again seems to refer to this as the "true Lutheran" herritage. This works great for Norwegian American Lutherans (who held a great deal of power in the ALC and less since the merger in 1988), but I just don't see how he can claim this as the predominant form of Lutheranism, or the mainstream of Christianity.

I'm actually OK with Nestingen (and anyone else) holding to their interpretation of the Bible as being against gay and lesbian sexual relationships (I know, this bugs some folks, but see my posting on queerty.com for my logic). What annoys me about this particular article is the way in which Nestingen uses what the Lutheran Confessions have to say about the Church in a way that to me communicates exactly the opposite teaching than they are meant to.

When the Lutheran reformers crafted the Augsburg Confession they were defending themselves to the Roman Catholic Church (which was ready to boot them for what they had been teaching) and attempting to show that they were really part of the Christian Church. This is definition that Nestingen uses, it comes from Article VII: "Also they teach that one holy Church is to continue forever. The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered." After the split from the Catholics, this became an important point of unity for the protestants, because before the Augsburg Confession, the Church exists only within the bounds of the Roman Catholic Church. To be outside of the institution was to be separated from Christ. The reformers said no, the Church of Jesus is not tied to any human institution--it exists within those institutions, but also outside of it--wherever the Gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered.

Nestingen instead flips this around to say that the ELCA (which by his ascertaining is not preaching the Gospel rightly) is THEREFOR no longer the Church. This was not in any way what the reformers were after--they were making a case that the Church could exist outside of its institutional forms NOT that the institutional forms (as broken as they may be) could not be the Church. Later on, the reformers got grumpy, started calling the pope the antichrist and other such nasty things, and started killing people who disagreed with them. But in terms of the Augsburg Confession, anyhow, they were making the case that the Church of Jesus MAY exist within our (or anybody's) attempts at organizing it and it MAY exist outside of these organizations--and really we're pretty poor judges of what God wants anyhow. The ELCA remains the Church even if we just made the stupidest decision ever made in the history of the Christianity. Otherwise, he's claiming that a gay pastor in a relationship (who Nestingen and others sees as an unrepentant sinner) has no chance of preaching law and gospel, offering forgiveness, and leading people to relationship with Christ. This is also not what the Confessions are after either.

Support for this comes in the very next section of the Augsburg Confession (Article VIII) entitled "What the Church is": "Although the Church properly is the congregation of saints and true believers, nevertheless, since in this life many hypocrites and evil persons are mingled therewith, it is lawful to use Sacraments administered by evil men, according to the saying of Christ: The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat, etc. Matt. 23:2. Both the Sacraments and Word are effectual by reason of the institution and commandment of Christ, notwithstanding they be administered by evil men."

So, I will allow that Nestigen thinks homosexuality is sin, and that preachers and congregations should not promote sin. Because the issue is clearly central to Christian faith as he sees it, I will also allow that he thinks he and many other people currently in the ELCA would be better served in relationship to another Christian denomination. I don't have a problem with that way of reading the Bible or people who are deciding to leave because they feel conscious bound to do so (though it makes me sad). But I will not permit (without comment anyhow) any Lutheran claiming (especially using the Augsburg Confession) that the ELCA is no longer a Church because of a decision that was made on how to read the Bible on the hot issue of the day, and I would argue this in the other direction as well. The institution or its official policies is not what makes the Church, it is Christ--proclaimed in Word and Sacrament.

Note carefully what Nestingen says here, near the end of this article: "Finally, since it isn’t institutional, the strongly suggested “wherever” of the seventh Article of the Augsburg Confession can under some circumstances lead beyond Lutheran parishes into other denominations."

Under some circumstances? Seriously? So much for the "wherever". He means to say: wherever the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered and is Lutheran (and maybe in other churches that are Lutheran but don't call themselves that). I hear in this that the "One True Lutheran" church (ELCA) has lost it's standing as such in Nestingen's eyes (and the LCMS, WELS, and other Lutheran groups aren't high on his list either based on his comments for those groups). I'm guessing that this happened when the ALC (more true?) merged into the ELCA and didn't get to do things exactly the way they had been doing them. But this understanding of the Church is a far cry from "wherever"--and I think he means wherever true Lutheran doctrine is being taught. Anybody else read him that way? If that's so, that's different.

On my Facebook page one of my friends who suggested we "Revive the LCA too while we're at it" and something about "ALC people wearing Birkenstocks" I replied with the following smart ass comment:

"Like the ELCA, the LCA was an abomination. The "One True Church" is the true heir of the Reformation, The Norwegian Lutheran Church that adopted the Unaltered Augsburg Confession (and never fooled around with Calvinists like the Germans). This perfect line was then carried to this country via the Norwegian Lutheran Synod (that never should have swtiched to English in worship) and perhaps some of the more Confessional Haugean Norwegains. This became the ALC (especially its leadership) and was represented fully at Luther Seminary (before that unholy union with Northwestern). These are my people (and Nestigens) and we would never be caught dead in Birkenstocks (ok, maybe, but only because they are amazingly practical and not flashy)."

My friend Jason, who is an elder in a more conservative Acts 29 church, didn't catch my sarcasm (or objected to my smart assery) and (rightly) rebuked me for speaking about other Christians in this way. To which I replied:

"Jason (and any other Christ follower) I have no problem recognizing you as a brother in Christ, and recognizing your Acts 29 church as part of the "One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" even though you and I disagree on any number of theological issues. In fact, I value your witness and conversation (esp over beer). As Christians we are less when we allow differences to split us from one another.

I honestly believe that the Church exists among those who gather to hear the Word and receive the sacraments--inside Lutheran Churches and certainly outside of them. I don't think we have any unique claims to rightness (no matter how Norwegian I may be). But the Lutheran way of being Christian makes the most sense to me, and I believe God has called me to be a part of this church. I have no doubt that God has called you to be a part of your church. And I have, with you Jason (many years ago), experienced Christ in an Assembly of God congregation which I doubt would pass Dr. Nestingen's orthodoxy test (nor mine, and that's part of why I didn't linger in that community too long, but God used it at the right time to lead me deeper into following Jesus). But I would never, ever say that was not the Church. To do so would be to deny the power of Christ to use broken, wrong headed people to proclaim the Good News of Jesus. And that puts me right out of a job."

I'm actually not all that interested in talking about homosexuality, gay sex, or anything of the sort. But I am interested in talking about the Bible, the Lutheran Confessions, and how best to be the Church witnessing to Jesus in this time and place.

And let me tell you, I've gotten to do more of that in the past month than probably ever before. People hear I'm a Lutheran and they want to know how I read the Bible. A room full of atheists and former Christians drinking wine and eating dessert asked me to talk about my faith---and they were interested! The waitress at the Pub shared with me that she grew up Lutheran and was thinking about coming back after the assembly vote. I spent half an afternoon this week at a coffee shop talking to my favorite Atheist-Bhuddist friend about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. (Why don't more of my Christian friends want to do this?) And I got to reconnect to my old friend Jason and talk faith with him over beer--which I hope is the first of many such conversations. I live for this stuff!

I'm actually kind of offended that Nestigen uses "unchurched" to describe himself and those who disagree with the decisions of the ELCA. You may be "un-denominationed". But there are many hurting people out there who really are "unchurched" and way more importantly have never heard the gospel in a way that they can understand it, in a way that makes sense in their lives, and in a way to which they can respond. There are people with questions that Jesus can help them make sense of, there are people with hurts that a community of faith centered on Christ can help heal, and there are people desperate to hear Good News in a world that is so full of bad news.

And in my experience in the past month I'm finding it easier to talk to those outside of the Christian worldview about why Jesus matters to me (and could possibly also to them) because we have made a decision to allow people who think being gay is OK to be a part of our church--and we haven't kicked out those who think its not OK. This is a powerful witness to these people (and to me) about what life looks like when you center it not on human concerns, but on unity in Christ. It's strange, it's not what they expect, and it makes them take a second look at this thing called the church (and Jesus) which pretty much a whole generation (18-40 year olds) as well as many older folks have written off as irrelivant, homophobic, hypocritical, and out of touch with reality. (see the book "UnChristian: What A New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity... and Why It Matters" for the statistics on these).

A fantastic podcast from Nadia Bolz-Weber

2009-09-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

I know that all of my readers are getting tired of me saying "Every Lutheran should read (or listen to) this" but I'm finding more amazing public witness by Lutherans than I have ever seen before. Let's keep it up friends!

Nadia Bolz-Weber (who I first encountered in this book my mom gave me, and then through her "Sarcastic Lutheran" blog) is a Lutheran pastor after my own heart and recntly recorded a really great podcast with fellow "Outlaw Preacher" Khad Young.

So, Lutherans (and others), listen to this if you feel like it, no pressure: http://www.khad.com/post/189104518/outlaw-preachers-precast-nadia-bolz-weber-this

Also, Twitter folks can check out the loosly defined community of Outlaw Preachers by searching #outlawpreachers. There's a Facebook group too.

More conversation on queerty.com

2009-09-16T17:21:00.000-07:00

After the ELCA Churchwide assembly I was asked to write a guest editorial for an LGBT news site called queerty.com. I had previously commented on a post that one of my fellow voting members had told me about. Then came a response via email that was then posted on the same site by ELCA Pastor Lura Groen which took me to task a bit (well, more than a bit) for my comments. I wrote a response to Lura which was posted on queerty.com today. Here it is (it kind of helps to read the previous ones because they are all connected).

An Article All Lutherans Need to Read

2009-09-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

There has been a great deal of writing by Lutherans since the Churchwide Assembly, but nothing that I have seen that even comes close to as theological or pastoral as this blog posting by Dr. David Yeago from Lutheran Theoological Southern Seminary. Clearly he is one of the great doctors of the church.

http://lutheranspersisting.wordpress.com/david-yeago-in-the-aftermath/

I finally get to preach back home about the Churchwide Assembly

2009-09-06T12:34:00.001-07:00

It's really, really hard for a preacher not to get to preach, especially when I feel like the Holy Spirit has a lot to say through me (and with such amazing texts!). When I got back from Churchwide Assembly, I was raring to go--ready to preach like crazy to the folks at Bethlehem. But the "the doctors tell me its not swine" flu had other plans for me, and I spent the week in bed and early Sunday morning last week in the ER. I got better. Thankfully my favorite lay preacher Jon Zemke stepped in at the last minute with a fantastic sermon (and it only cost me lunch and a beer).

So today was my first sermon back in the pulpit at Bethlehem Lutheran in Spokane (Preaching on the book of James no less. Luther would be so ashamed). But actually, it's a great text to help us ponder what really happened at the Churchwide Assembly.

To hear it, follow the link to my sermon blog: "Reframing James: Faith without works is alright for you, but it's no good for your neighbor" by Rev. Erik Samuelson

Hymn of the Day

2009-08-31T16:27:00.000-07:00

I'm retitling this hymn "The Emerging Missional Church Theme Song"

The church of Christ in every age,
beset by change but Spirit-led,
must claim and test its heritage
and keep on rising from the dead.

Across the world, across the street,
the victims of injustice cry
for shelter and for bread to eat,
and never live until they die.

The let the servant church arise,
a caring church that longs to be
a partner in Christ's sacrifice,
and clothed in Christ's humanity.

For he alone, whose blood was shed,
can cure the fever in our blood,
and teach us how to share our bread
and feed the starving multitude.

We have no mission but to serve
in full obedience to our Lord:
to care for all, without reserve,
and spread his liberating word.

Original publishing details here.

Well, here's something different

2009-08-28T07:01:00.001-07:00

During the Churchwide Assembly, one of the other voting members (with whom I had shared a pint at Brit's Pub) came up to me and told me about one of the other voting members (who was speaking against the sexuality changes) appearing on a gay news website called queerty.com. The articl e was entitled "Watch Live: Listen to Lutheran hate speech as it happens", and as you could perhaps guess, it was not flattering to this young pastor, and the comments were downright horrible. So I posted a comment about what this pub friend of mine had done in response, which queerty.com turned into another whole article.

Then I got an email from the publisher of queerty.com, asking if I would be willing to write a guest op-ed piece for them. I agreed, and here it is.

Brit's Pub in Minneapolis

2009-08-27T18:48:00.001-07:00

So the hour has come when I normally turn to a nice pint of homebrew (or NW microbrew if I've been lazy on brewing lately). And since I've caught something horrible (they tell me it is a cold, not swine flu like I thought) from my dear friends in Minneapolis, the the idea of a beer right now is pretty much the last thing on my mind (say it ain't so!). So instead of drinking a nice homebrewed IPA in the style of Diamond Knot instead I am sipping diet 7up and reflecting on the amazing public house experience that is Brit's Pub in Minneapolis.

With a name like Brit's, I should have expected no less, who but the British know how to create the real pub experience? However, knock-offs are legion, and so I was suspicious. Brit's is the real deal (nonsensical Andy Capp cartoons in the bathroom is proof enough for me). Like a slowly opening flower, Brit's revealed its amazingness to me bit by bit. I came upon it looking for a home away from home from which to blog (following a life changing trip to Solomons's Porch and the White Castle). And, not only did I find a friendly place with room at the bar and a local-ish IPA on tap (Goose Island from Chicago, which was a new one for me, and really good) but free Wi-Fi, which I have decided is a new requirement for pubs. And so I blogged away, enjoying the publy surroundings.

The next trip was for an early dinner, at the suggestion of my aunt who is from Minneapolis. She, my cousin, and I dined on their rooftop patio (they have a patio?) and talked about the Churchwide Assembly (and more interestingly I think) my 17 year old cousin's experience at the ELCA Youth Gathering. While I enjoyed shepherd's pie (amazing) and company of my family, we watched the young beautiful happy-hour people of downtown Minneapolis (Dot-com crowd? Does that even exist anymore?) playing lawn bowling on the roof. Yes you read that right, lawn bowling. This increased the coolness level of Brit's to a whole new level for me. And they had an outdoor movie screen. If The Big Lebowski had been playing I'm pretty sure I would have taken up residence.

I found myself drawn again and again to this place, for some amazing conversation, some fantastic blogging, and some great beer. I also discovered the British delicacy known as "Scotch Eggs" (special ingredient: evil) and I think you could have probably checked my cholesterol that night with a dipstick. So, I'm a bit sad that Brit's is 1371 miles from my house. But with $6 beers, and heart-stoppingly greasy food I would have to order again and again, I suppose I shouldn't be too upset.

While we're at it, let's talk about divorce too

2009-08-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

In all the talk about lifelong committed same-gender partnerships for homosexual people over the past several years, we have lost much conversation about divorce which (I would expect) actually affects more people in our churches directly. While there are many congregations that don't have (openly) gay members, I doubt that there are any that have no divorced members. Families too--its becoming more and more rare to find families not affected by divorce in one way or another.

This comes hot on the heels of the reaction of (many? some? a few?) ELCA pastors and congregations connected to the LutheranCORE organization who can not abide the stance of the ELCA on homosexuality at the Churchwide Assembly and are now leaving the ELCA (or pulling funding anyhow) and joining a new denomination, the LCMC, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (not to be confused with the LC -MS, Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod).

When read with the same sort of lens as LutheranCORE and others have offered to the homosexuality discussion, the Bible has some pretty clear words on divorce, many from the mouth of Jesus himself, which actually seem less open to interpretation than the ones on homosexuality: Malachi 2:16, Matthew 5:31-32, Matthew 19:3-9, Mark 10:2-12, Luke 16:18, 1 Corinthians 7:10-17. I'm interested in how this will play out, as I imagine that (many? some? a few?) of the people who leave the ELCA for the LCMC will be (or will have in their close friends and family) people who are divorced and remarried. Will the LCMC reach out in welcome to them, even though one could assert, from the Bible, that they are "adulterers"? Will they only allow "repentant" divorced people who agree to remain celebate? Will they allow divorced (and further, divorced and remarried) pastors? Will they bless marriages (or unions) in which one or both of the partners has been divorced?

People think I'm just being snarky when I ask these sorts of questions, but I'm honestly not. I'm concerned where the argument for this sort of way of reading the Bible naturally leads, and how that will affect people who have experienced divorce. And here's a big reason why: In 2006, during my first year as a Lutheran pastor, the Gospel reading for one of the Sunday's in early October was Mark 10:2-16, which included Jesus' teachings on marriage being "joining a man and a woman into one flesh" and "what God has joined let no one separate" and "whoever divorces and remarries commits adultery."

Now, as a Lutheran pastor I am trained to draw my preaching from the Bible, to use the readings presented to shape the message, and to not be afraid to preach "Law" to lead people to long to hear the "Gospel"--to shake them up when needed so they can hear the Good News even more clearly. So I crafted a sermon that had some harsh things to say about the brokenness of human relationships--lifting up God's standard and showing how we fall away from it, how easily we stray from what God created us to be. "Jesus tells us God is against divorce," I told my congregation, "and even calls people who divorced 'adulterers'. But he does so in a 'love the sinner, hate the sin' sort of way. And the Good News is that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." The idea was to shock them with God's standards (which are harsh in this text) so that they Good News that we're all broken might be clearer. But as I looked out at the room, I got the sense that what people were actually hearing was Bad News, and that the promise of forgiveness didn't sound so promising to them.

And then my face fell on a couple, with whom I had been on a hiking trip with the day before (Saturday--after my sermon was done and printed). On this "get to know the new pastor" hike, these folks in their late 50's shared their story with me: how they'd had difficult marriages that fell apart, how they'd felt alone for so many years, how they turned to our congregation for support and care in their brokenness, and found not a harsh critique of what had happened to them, but a loving, welcoming community that has as a guiding principle "Everyone is Welcome" and lives this out every day. And then, by sheer Grace, God introduced them to one another through the church--the best thing that ever happened to them, they said--and they fell in love and got married, transforming their lives and faiths in the process.

By the time I looked to these two (snuggling in their normal place in the pews) it was too late. I was on a roll, the law was flowing forth with gusto, and though I paused, there was not much I could do but keep going. But when I came to the part that was meant to comfort, to console-- to show people that all that law was simply to show us all that Jesus loves everybody equally, forgives sins, and calls us to a new way of life--it seemed somehow less than convincing, even to me. What I was trying to say simply did not mesh the story that I'd heard the day before: that God turns brokenness into healing, death into new life, heals broken relationships when people reach out with hospitality and love. And as I got down from the pulpit I felt like crap, realizing that I'd failed in my calling to preach the Gospel in ways that people can hear it. And though the law is appropriate at times, and we need to call one another to account, I simply couldn't see in this case how it helped--but I could clearly see on the face of these two people, how it hurt them.

So after worship I pulled the couple into my office, explained to them all these thoughts, and apologized for what I had done, how I had hurt them without good cause, and to speak in person the "Good News" part I'd failed to fully communicate in the sermon. And they were unbelievably gracious to me, as only broken and healed people can be, and embraced me. They could hear, even in my sermon, what my intent was and that I didn't mean them any ill will. And since we had started build a relationship (though only a day old) they were willing to cut me some slack (thanks be to God!). But I'm haunted by the fact that there were two visiting families that day who have never come back, whose stories of brokenness and healing I'll never get to know.

Its funny how this law/gospel thing works sometimes, and this experience was a sharp lesson for me in how much context matters. What might be the sort of "law" in one context that could lead to embracing Good News (say if I were counseling a couple to stick it out in their marriage even though it is hard) became something diabolical and merely hurtful in this context. And my attempt at a "law" sermon did preach the law that leads to repentance, but I was the recipient of it. In my own speaking I condemned myself, and only through turning to the reconciliation offered in Christ (which led me to apologize) did I hear the Good News for me. And how ironic that (contrary to my own preaching) these supposed "unrepentant, adulterous" remarried people became God's messengers of both Law (when I looked on them and realized my own sin) and Gospel when, despite what I had done to them, they offered me the unmerited grace I had denied to them.

And while I don't suggest we get rid of the law, we need to recognize that it is a much more mysterious thing than just enforcing God's law or calling for repentance. In this example the preaching of the law had precisely its interned effect--but the effect God had in mind was speaking law to me, not me speaking God's law to someone else. It is a reminder to me that our over focus on law (on rules and who breaks them) can lead us to harm one another and set up a false distinction between "law followers" and "law ignorers." The reality is that both of these false "camps" are harmful, and lead us to mistreat one another. The true power of the law is that it shows how screwed up this whole way of arguing is--we are all brothers and sisters in Christ and when we debate who is in and who is out, who is lawful and who is not, we end up hurting one another. And I'm pretty sure that if God keeps a sin score-card (which of course he doesn't but if he did) "Christians hurting other Christians in the name of Jesus" would fall pretty close to the top of that list. The truth of my sermon on divorce was that we were all broken people in need of reconciled relationships, and we needed each other both to remind one another of that fact, but also in solidarity to give and receive forgiveness as Jesus taught us.

So back to church politics, here's where this teaching of the strict "laws" against homosexuality (to the point where some Lutherans intend to "divorce" themselves from one another) seems to lead down a legalistic path that might be really hard to carry out lovingly in their context on other things like divorce. Its one thing to draw a line in the sand when it comes to God's law for gay and lesbian folks especially if that is culturally acceptable or tolerated, or if there aren't any (openly) gay people in your congregation. But to follow the same line of logic on divorce is going to stir up some major conflict in pretty much any congregation, and will make the task of telling people about Jesus that much more difficult.

Imagine a conversation in a restaurant: Non-Christian couple: "Thank you for sharing the Good News about Jesus with us! What is to prevent us from being baptized? Can we come to church with you on Sunday?" Christian evangelist: "Sure! But wait, is this your first marriage?" Non-Christian couple: "Um...no. We've both been married twice before." Christian evangelist: "I'm sorry, Christians believe that second marriages are adulterous and you wouldn't be welcome. Sorry. Bye!"

I fully understand the desire of my brother and sister Lutherans to stand on conscience and not allow what they understand to be false teaching. Homosexuality, they assert, is contrary to the clear teachings of the Bible. I also understand the desire (following dear Luther himself) to be willing to sacrifice the unity of the Church for one's principles. We are, after all, ecclesia semper reformanda, an "always reforming church." But I worry, if teachings such as this aren't consistent, wouldn't there quickly be yet another split--between those in the LCMC who insist on the same sort of reading on divorce (and perhaps, women clergy?!) against those who disagree. And then, I don't know what argument can be made that wouldn't contradict the one used on homosexuality.

LutheranCORE, wrote a letter sent on 8/21/09 suggesting ELCA congregations join LCMC and either leave the ELCA or withhold their money (but keep their pensions and other benefits of being part of the ELCA. This is bad stewardship in my view, but that's another blog). Sorry, back to my point--In this letter they assert: "The assembly has voted to remove the ELCA from the universal Christian consensus on marriage and homosexual behavior. Lutheran CORE intends to remain faithful to the clear teaching of Scripture and the consistent teaching of the Christian Church worldwide and throughout time.” I honor their claim and their commitment to their principles (and to Biblical principles), but I wonder if they realize how costly this will be for them, especially if they follow they "universal consensus on marriage and homosexual behavior" as taught by the Roman Catholic Church, which gives special honor to celibacy (contrary to Luther's own writings on the subject), and refuses to bless people who have been divorced, ordain women, or clergy in any sort of sexual relationship (with a few exceptions). The Eastern Orthodox Church also requires any clergy not married before ordination to remain celibate, and previously married pastors are forbidden to remarry (even in the case of death of the spouse). And there hardly seems to be "universal consensus" on divorce among protestants (even very conservative ones) and if there was, why don't we see (as disagreement generally plays out in our sound bite culture) signs proclaiming: "God hates divorce! Malachi 2:16" like the "God hates fags! Romans 9:13" signs that have been so "popular" in the past few decades?

To those of you who disagree with me, I would love to hear how the teachings on homosexuality and divorce are different, and why the teaching of groups such as LutheranCORE (or other conservative Christian groups that forbid homosexuality but allow divorce and remarriage) would be different on one arena of sexual behavior forbidden in the Bible than on another. To me, it seems like the approach that the ELCA is leaning into with the newly adopted social statement and decisions on GLBT relationships and clergy is much better able to answer these seeming contradictions.

In a nutshell, the change in the ELCA which the folks at LutheranCORE (and elsewhere) are so upset about isn't to categorically say "homosexuality is totally OK" but to admit to the existing range of Lutheran interpretation and applications a fourth possibility that allows congregations for which it makes sense (and who believe it Biblically) to bless same gender relationships and ordain pastors in these relationships. It doesn't actually force any Lutherans to believe any differently than they do, except to recognize that there are other points of view, and to trust that we can differ on this point without breaking fellowship with one another. This is a very Lutheran attempt to still be one in Christ amidst differences (which are many beyond this issue) and to say there are things we could be spending our time on (say, mission and evangelism) that would be more interesting to fight over than this. Here's the section on this range of understandings from the social statement:

This church recognizes that, with conviction and integrity:

• On the basis of conscience-bound belief, some are
convinced that same-gender sexual behavior is sinful,
contrary to biblical teaching and their understanding of
natural law. They believe same-gender sexual behavior
carries the grave danger of unrepentant sin. They therefore
conclude that the neighbor and the community are best
served by calling people in same-gender sexual
relationships to repentance for that behavior and to a
celibate lifestyle. Such decisions are intended to be
accompanied by pastoral response and community support.

• On the basis of conscience-bound belief, some are
convinced that homosexuality and even lifelong,
monogamous, homosexual relationships reflect a broken
world in which some relationships do not pattern
themselves after the creation God intended. While they
acknowledge that such relationships may be lived out with
mutuality and care, they do not believe that the neighbor or
community are best served by publicly recognizing such
relationships as traditional marriage.

• On the basis of conscience-bound belief, some are
convinced that the scriptural witness does not address the
context of sexual orientation and lifelong loving and
committed relationships that we experience today. They
believe that the neighbor and community are best served
when same-gender relationships are honored and held to
high standards and public accountability, but they do not
equate these relationships with marriage. They do,
however, affirm the need for community support and the
role of pastoral care, and may wish to surround lifelong
monogamous relationships or covenant unions with prayer.

• On the basis of conscience-bound belief, some are
convinced that the scriptural witness does not address the
context of sexual orientation and committed relationships
that we experience today. They believe that the neighbor
and community are best served when same-gender
relationships are lived out with lifelong and monogamous
commitments that are held to the same rigorous standards,
sexual ethics, and status as heterosexual marriage. They
surround such couples and their lifelong commitments with
prayer to live in ways that glorify God, find strength for the
challenges that will be faced, and serve others. They
believe same-gender couples should avail themselves of
social and legal support for themselves, their children and
other dependents, and seek the highest legal accountability
available for their relationships.

In addition, the assembly affirmed that we need to respect the "bound consciences" of one another--not just that some will have consciences which are bound to one interpretation, but also that our consciences are bound to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. We need all of these understandings and applications of the Biblical witness in context because it allows us all to see more fully, and to be in relationship with those who profoundly disagree. This is not how the world works--you are meant to pick a side and battle until one beats the other and the true winner is declared. This other way just doesnt make sense.

The fact that it doesn't make sense (How can people who fundamentally disagree on important matters of faith and scripture not battle to the death until one mind is reached?) is part of its profound beauty, and its reliance on the "strange to the world" Lutheran theological emphasis on paradoxical "both/and" thinking. Christ was both human and divine, we are both sinners and saints, the world is both loved by God and profoundly disordered. Saturday morning at the Churchwide Assembly, Pr. John Nunes of Lutheran World Relief quoted Arthur Carl Piepkorn: "Only Jesus death and resurrection can make sense, ultimate sense, out of our terrifying absurdity." The prospect of holding this range teaching without splintering to little bits is "terrifyingly absurd" (its really haaard, to quote Nadia Bolz-Weber) and I think it reminds us how absurd this whole "one in Christ" thing is--Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, men and women, gay and straight, red states and blue states, and all range of worldly divisions that try to split us apart melt away because all we really have in common, when it comes right down to it, is Jesus. Crazy talk. But that's how we Lutherans roll.

It seems to me that people and groups like LutheranCORE that oppose the fourth option are going to have a much better time sticking things out together within this framework than outside of it. I think its reasonable to say something like: "Because of how we have come to understand together what the Bible means in our context, it makes sense to "bind" the teaching on homosexuality even as we "loose" the teaching on divorce and women pastors. But we don't claim to be totally right for all times and places and so we not only stay in fellowship with people who disagree, but we allow one another to challenge each other, because the capital-T Truth is not really in one understanding or another, but in Christ--the Word of God that comes to us in community through the Bible by the power of the Holy Spirit--and we all see through a glass darkly. "

But, as this assembly has proven over and over to me, that Word of God comes to us first as law, reveals us all to be in bondage to sin (legalists, antinomians, and mushy-centrists alike) at the foot of the cross, and painfully reveals how screwed up our community has become over this. What sort of witness is that we have been offering to the world?

What does speak volumes (and I hope is the witness of this past week) is that Christians, like the Lutherans (screwed up as we may be), can think all sorts of things on important issues, can disagree and even argue passionately with one another, but in the end, we are family--and don't allow these wordly divisions to get in the way of unity in Christ. At the danger of being redundant from my previous posts, what the ELCA claimed (and quite publicly) is to embody the words of the song "Peace" from Church of the Beloved in Edmonds, WA:

"Broken conversations, broken people, we're broken Lord. Terrified illusions, seeking comfort, we're seeking more. We need each other more than we need to agree. Father, Son, Spirit bless us with your love, with your grace and peace. Peace. Let there be peace."

We are a broken people, a screwed up church that can't figure out one authoritative teaching on sexuality for all times and places that will do what God intends. But we know we need each other, and we long to be in relationship with one another as Christ calls us to be. And like the couple from my church who found out what real love looked like because of the brokeness they had experienced in previous relationships and so were able to offer it to me when I needed it, we're just a bunch of broken people connecting to other broken people who find peace not in all being perfect (or even all being the same) but in Jesus who broke himself for us--and continue to break himself for us--so that we could be made whole. And I still wonder what would have happened with those two families whom I never saw again if I'd figured all of this out before now.

A little CWA blogroll

2009-08-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

I keep coming across interesting things worth reading about the Churchwide Assembly. So I'm going to make a little blogroll in this post, and I'll keep adding to it.

http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=4325 (This is actually a pretty good read of what happened, I just disagree with his conclusions).

http://www.jakebouma.com/ (Jake has lots of good stuff to say)

http://www.sarcasticlutheran.typepad.com/ (If you aren't reading Nadia's stuff by now, you should be)

Some links to others telling my story

2009-08-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

One of the things I found myself doing at (and now after) the Churchwide Assembly was telling my story, and the story of how God had spoken to me through other people's stories. Its a strange thing telling other peoples stories, but an important exercise I think because we really want to be faithful to them as we do so--putting the best read on our neighbor's intentions. Its humbling too when others tell your story, especially when "you" are really not the point of the story, but they use it to talk about Jesus. This happens all the time in Christian community and usually we don't know about it. But the Twitter/Facebook/Blogosphere makes this way more visible, especially as we share that we are telling these stories (which also keeps us accountable).

I've found a couple of links to ways that people have used my story (and the story of my new friend John) to talk about Jesus, and I thought I'd share them. They (actually) are better at talking about what I was trying to get at that I have been. So (especially for those who are pissed that I spoke at the red mic against ordaining gay and lesbian pastors even though I voted for it) check out what I meant to say through these people's telling:

Rev. Peter Samuelson (my uncle) from Atlanta

Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber from Denver

I'll keep adding to that list on this post if I find any more. Feel free to steal any of my stories to talk about Jesus! (if you make money off it though, I'd love a beer).

A parable of reconciliation

2009-08-23T05:35:00.000-07:00

Very early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, a disciple of Jesus was sitting alone in the marketplace. Just then, some people approached him, still rejoicing in the wonders they had seen in the assembly. Among them was a man who had been mute from birth, who had found healing and now was speaking. And the people told the disciple that today the ones who had been far off had been brought near, even to the very heart of the assembly where bread is broken and wine poured out. Everyone who had gathered had seen the Lord, and justice had been done, but some were mourning.

And while they were still speaking, a stranger approached and began to speak to them. She spoke from her confusion and those who were rejoicing did not understand a single word that she was saying to them. Suddenly the man who had been mute understood her to be a foreigner, and in her rush of speech he was silenced again. The man who had been mute spoke his truth to her, although she did not hear him, and he walked away. His friends who had been rejoicing with him followed quickly after to comfort him, leaving the woman alone with the disciple. She continued to speak about all manner of things—about brokenness, about loosing her home and her family, about feeling betrayed, about having no where to feel safe, and finally about the pain of being silenced.

Then the Holy Spirit spoke to the disciple saying: “Take this woman to her brother, that all may be reconciled.” The disciple took her by the hand and led her to her brother and she embraced him. And through their tears they whispered to one another the words neither had been allowed to say. Then the Holy Spirit said to the man who had been mute: “Tell her what it is like to be silenced, to feel broken, betrayed, alone. Use your pain to comfort your sister.” And the man who had been mute spoke the Good News to her, and to all who were gathered there, and they saw the face of Christ in one another.

Then the disciple said to them: Go and tell what you have seen here, of the power of God for the reconciliation of brothers and sisters. To this we are witnesses. And all those who had gathered were scattered, and returning to their homes, they told of all the wonders they had seen and heard. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being made whole.

What will be my witness?

2009-08-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

Bishop Hanson asked all those at the Churchwide Assembly "What will be your witness?" This week has been one of law and gospel, of brokenness and wholeness, of tears and laughter, of sadness and joy, of broken relationships and reconciliation. I know it will take a lot of processing to figure out what happened this week, and what it means to the Church and the world. But this week I experienced the Church of Jesus in an incredibly tangible way, as our "wish dream" of the church community (to use Bonhoeffer's term) was replaced with genuine community--through suffering to reconciliation, through death to resurrection, through Good Friday to Easter Morning. To quote Bonhoeffer in "Life Together":

Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

[Here is a strange thing: when I searched for this quote, the first link on Google was a blog that had as its main image the very same image that has been hanging in the worship space at the assembly. Strange. Holy Spirit?]

So anyhow, the question is what will my witness be, and when I think of this word I can't help but think about the Book of Acts where "you are witnesses to these things" rings like a constant refrain. And again and again the disciples of Jesus encounter others, listen to them, and then tell their story, and Jesus' story, into the lives of those they encounter--even (and perhaps especially) when those people are in some way "other." And it is somehow in the listening and telling of these stories that the Holy Spirit uses the disciples to bring Good News to people who haven't experienced it before (or haven't experienced it for them anyway). Through stories hearts are transformed and community is created. So my witness, I think, is the stories I now bear of just what happened as the ELCA gathered to be that strange form of Church, the Churchwide Assembly. So I will tell my stories and from time to time post them as I come to reflect on them, and I imagine they will continue to bear meaning even as we journey away from the assembly.

Seeing the face of Christ

2009-08-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I felt compelled to speak before the ELCA Churchwide Assembly--something which absolutely terrified me. (You can watch it here, about 37 minutes into the video--also watch Jay McDivit who spoke two people after me.) This is not something I would normally be inclined to do, but I felt like I had a perspective to offer that I hadn't yet heard. And so, when the Assembly went into Committee of the Whole to discuss "Gift and Trust: The ELCA Social Statement on Human Sexuality" I quickly found myself in the queue at the mic to speak in favor of adopting the social statement.

I was honestly pretty freaked out to be at the mic, and I voiced this fear (hoping it might calm my nerves to acknowledge it publicly) and asked the assembly if it would pray for me as I spoke. People who know me asked if this was an intentional "ice breaker" to get people engaged and on my side, because typically I come off as quite confident in public speaking (I'm a preacher for crying out loud) and they were surprised that I would be so nervous. But it wasn't a ploy at all, I was shaking as I stood in line and that got even worse after I sat down. Simply terrified. I don't know if it was the gravity of the situation, the 3 minute time limit, or the fact that I was making a very public proclamation on an issue that is very controversial. But I knew I needed the prayers of this church to make it through (and I came to find out later via Twitter and Facebook that many of my friends were praying along at home.)

My call for prayer, however, was answered in another way that caught me totally off guard. While I was standing in line before my turn came at the green "in favor" mic I met the fellow in the red "opposed" line next to me whose name was John. During some moment of parliamentary mumbo-jumbo on the stage we had been chatting about what we thought was key to this issue of homosexuality and the Bible. We had a great conversation over those few minutes, but it was clear that we were coming from totally different places on this and that we would be speaking opposite points to the assembly. But the conversation was good--just the sort of open, honest theological engagement with people who disagree that I hope this social statement will lead us into. But what caught me totally off guard was that when I asked for prayer from the Assembly, John put his hand on my shoulder and left it there, holding me in prayer the entire time I was speaking.

As powerful as the laying on of hand was for me this Sunday at Solomon's Porch (see post below) this act of kindness and Christian compassion blew my mind. Added to that I was speaking about Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-40 and how when these two people shared faith across differences that both emerged changed. On my shoulder I had a physical reminder of just how powerful this can be--and why disagreements need not divide us from our Christian brothers and sisters. John became for me the face of Christ in a place I least expected it. A word, a touch, and act of unbelievable grace across the aisle, with someone whom it would be so easy to ignore, attack, or dismiss. A reminder that Christ calls us ALL to repentance, to confess of the ways that we have failed to be neighborly to one another, and thus have failed to make Christ real in the lives of others. John, you made Christ real for me last night.

And so tonight, my heart broke when the social statement was adopted. Don't get me wrong, I was in favor of it passing, but my heart broke because I knew that while I celebrated, my brother in Christ John would be mourning. And when the Presiding Bishop announced that worship the next day would include a time for washing one another's feet, I knew that I needed to worship with John, to take an opportunity to repay the amazing gift he had given me, to sing and pray together, to share Christ's body and blood, and on bended knee to wash my new friend's feet. I need to be the church with John for both of our sakes, to let the Word wash over me and him together, to be united in prayer, to be encountered by Christ in the bread and wine we share, to humble myself as he humbled himself.

When I went to find John, I found him already deep in conversation with someone about the effects of this social statement for him. And as I stood waiting for a moment to invite him to join me the next day for worship, I overheard his pain, his sadness, his sense of betrayal of the church he knows and loves. And I know that John is not alone in his grief. Tonight there are many ELCA Lutherans in mourning, wondering where they will now find a place where they are welcome, that preaches the Good News of Jesus in a way they can understand and be encountered by it. But the closeness of the vote (EXACTLY the 2/3 needed for adoption--that never happens) reminds me that this situation could have so easily been reversed (by a single vote). But, had that happened, I would not have been surprised had John tracked me down, embraced me, offered words of comfort and encouragement, and invited me to worship with him. To reach out with that neighborly love that Jesus calls us to extend to one another.

In the end, this is what this whole conversation is really all about. How will we love one another, remain in community with one another, support and uplift each other in the face of extreme differences? That is the calling that Christ gives us when we are baptized into the community of the Church. It is a mighty challenge, especially when it comes to issues that ignite great passion. But that is where we are called in Baptism--to be one body, one church, one community of people who come together not because we agree on everything, but because of Christ. And John was the face of Christ to me through this, and I pray that I (or someone) can be the face of Christ for him, to share the grace that he and so many others desperately need to hear, that they too are welcome, that they are valued as beloved Children of God, and that even though we profoundly disagree our unity comes from Christ.

My church is less without John and all of those people who read the Bible differently than I do, who apply it differently based on their context, their lives, and their best attempts to be faithful in life and practice. All the news this evening has been about the upcoming split in the ELCA, but I pray that the news of tomorrow and the days ahead is the shocking, countercultural news that the ELCA did not split--that those who "lost" embraced those who "won" and walked hand in hand from the plenary hall where motions are debated and decisions made into the worship hall where Christ comes to us all--whoever we are, whatever we believe, however different we are--and transforms us into his body for the sake of the world. That would be Good News indeed.

"Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you? Pray that I will have the grace to let you be my servant too."

God is already at work in Minneapolis

2009-08-16T19:03:00.001-07:00

On my way to Minneapolis today, I realized that I would be arriving early enough in the afternoon that I might still have time to gather with one of the emergent Christian communities in Minneapolis. Trouble is, I didn't know where to go. My inquiries via Twitter and Facebook friends came up nil, and then I remembered a tweet from a few days ago from author, pastor, and emergent figurehead or whatever Doug Pagitt (whose tweets I follow) about him renting out a room in Minneapolis. So while waiting to "de-plane" I googled him on the trusty ol' iPhone and found out that his church (Solomons's Porch) had a 6pm service. I also figured out that it was one simple bus ride from my hotel (and there is a White Castle mid route, yeah!). Seriously, how did we get by before all this super-connected technology? (oh yeah, we planned ahead)

Since I'd missed lunch while crossing time zones and I didn't think I had time to hop off the bus for the White Castle, I arrived at Solomon's Porch quite hungry, but also hungry in another sense. The Churchwide Assembly has been weighing on me these past days, and I needed a place and a community in which to pray--to spend some good ol' quality time with Jesus, and find some rest for my spirit. As I sat in quiet contemplation on my chosen couch (yes, couch), down sits a guy called Mark with his family. We get to talking and I tell him I'm a Lutheran pastor in town for the assembly and it turns out he is a PHD student at Luther Seminary. Then the service begins.

I'd noticed when I'd sat down that there was some flat bread and a decanter of wine or juice or something on the coffee table in front of me and other loaves of various kind of bread and similar decanters on other tables throughout the worship space. I noticed them especially because I hadn't eaten in 7 hours, but for a fleeting second I thought they might be food for my other need--the "encountering Jesus in, with, and under bread and wine in a community" need. But I've been to other post-modern, emergent, or otherwise non-liturgical churches who have rediscovered the sacraments and are exploring how to reintroduce them into their community life--so I wasn't getting my hopes up (except for the snack). Most of the time I've been at worship services like this that include communion it's hardly the incarnational event that it is in worship in the Lutheran tradition. And its not that folks aren't trying. Its just that there is something about saying "hey, we're doing communion tonight, its over there" that is fundamentally different from the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus embedded in the liturgy that moves from the proclamation of Grace in the particular, to Grace in the specific ("the Body and Blood of Christ, even for you", as one of my friends once said) an embodied Grace that I get to take and eat--to taste and see for myself that the Lord is good. There is a depth and richness to that communion event that is just lacking in most non-liturgical traditions, at least the ones I have experienced.

So I wasn't expecting much from communion at Solomon's Porch, and really wasn't all that surprised when, following the first song, they announced that they had moved communion to the beginning of the service, and after reciting something religious sounding (that did include mention of Jesus), we were to serve each other around our little coffee table groups. At least, I thought, I'd get my snack. So people moved about, breaking bread, saying various things to one another as they did, and having communion/snack time together (the bread was very tasty). But during this, something happened that transformed the whole thing for me. The pastor, Doug Pagitt, came over to my new friend Mark and asked him if he would offer a prayer when we got to that point in the service. "So," says Doug to Mark, "it turns out that there are a whole bunch of Lutherans gathering in town this week to talk about some important stuff, and I'd like you to offer a prayer for them." "Sure," says Mark to Doug, "in fact, Erik here is a Lutheran pastor in town for the conference." "You are?" says Doug to me, "Maybe you could say a few things to the group so we could understand more what is going on better before we pray." "Sure," says I.

And here I was, having come to this place of prayer to spend some time with just me and God, and suddenly I was invited into the community, to speak, to ask for prayer and to receive it on behalf of my fellow Lutherans. Just to be included and lifted up in prayer was communion for me--an embodied, spirit filled, act of Grace from God through ordinary stuff (in this case people)--and it was exactly what I was hungering for. And so, at that point in the service, Mark and I got up and I shared with this strange community in which I didn't know anyone (except for Mark) my deep need for prayer, and my desire for unity amidst difference in the ELCA, and that the Holy Spirit would be at work among us. I spoke for all 4.6 million of us, seeking the prayers and support of this community of faith with whom we may have little in common except we all follow Jesus. And then Mark prayed, and as he spoke I felt a hand on my shoulder, then another, and another. And in that moment I experienced specifically, bodily, and for me what until that point had been only proclaimed in the general--you are not alone, we are all in this together, and even more importantly, that the Church of Jesus is one despite our differences.

I may never step foot in this place again, might never encounter this community again, but they were for me tonight the Body of Christ--and that's exactly what I was hungering for. With this experience tonight (and the White Castle hamburgers in my tummy) it is clear to me that God is at work in this place, that the Holy Spirit works in, with, and under everything that we do. And so I enter this week in great hope that the followers of Jesus who come together to be the ELCA in Churchwide Assembly will be filled and inspired, and will converse and deliberate, and will embody the Good News of Jesus so that every one of us--and all who hear of what God is up to among us--can encounter God in Jesus Christ in this crazy gathering of people we call the Church.

My prayer for this week (from @Luth55IL): Lord, when our debates are over and the votes counted may those watching be able to say: "See how they love one another".

Back to what is really important

2009-08-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

So far in this blog experience I have been writing about the "public ministry" side of my little pub trinity (see the header if you don't know what I mean). This is, of course, because I will soon (tomorrow) be in Minnesota as a Voting Member to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, and this particular adventure is taking the role of primary vocation for the next week.

In order to prepare for the emotional, physical, and spiritual gauntlet that is about to take place, I have left Spokane, WA and returned to the Western Side of my home state to recharge my batteries with a bit of family, bike riding, and--of course--a few pints. And this brings me to the topic of this post, beer.

I really enjoy living in Spokane. It is a wonderful community, the weather (aside from occasional freakiness) is generally quite nice, and it is a fantastic place to bike, hike, snowboard, and kayak. Its a growing metropolitan area that still thinks of itself as a small town, and it suits me just fine. My only complaint, Spokane, is your glaring lack of microbrew pubs--and I take this quite seriously.

Now, don't get me wrong, there is good beer to be found in Spokane. But there is something, I don't know, "right and salutary" about encountering a beer in its natural habitat--and knowing that it only recently has moved from fermenter to keg to my glass. Not only is this good from a carbon footprint perspective (how much CO2 is generated hauling crappy beer all across this great nation?) but there is something different about drinking a beer from the place it was made, perhaps sharing a conversation about its development from the brewer sitting next to you at the bar, and being in a place where other people "get" what makes that particular brew unique. It provides for instant commonality and a basis for relationship, and I think is a big part of what makes a pub community "hang together".

Spokane has, to my knowledge, only three brew pubs: The Steamplant, Northern Lights, and C.I. Shenannigans. I'll start with the least known, Shenannigans, which I discovered (on a bike ride) houses a small, almost secret brewing operation--an extension of "The Ram" brewing company in Tacoma that was a mainstay when I was at PLU. The beer there is quite good, but overpriced, and the atmosphere is a bit "snooty" for my tastes--meaning, I feel a bit awkward bellying up to the bar in my sweaty bike togs. There is also no bike rack, which is odd because they are actually on the Centennial Trail. Northern Lights also has great beer, but something about the "vibe" in their brewpub leads me to prefer drinking their beer elsewhere. The Steamplant is far and away my favorite in Spokane. The atmosphere of the building alone (renovated from the old steam plant in fact) makes it fun to hang out in. The beer is fantastic (ala Couer d'Alene Brewing Co. brewed on premises) and the happy hour beer prices simply can't be beat. However, the food is vastly overpriced and frankly sucks (apart from the hummus plate, which is amazing) and there is just a certain something missing--close but not quite the full brewpub experience.

So on this little Western Washington layover, I found myself once again at the Boundary Bay Brewing Company in Bellingham, WA. I am a major "hop head," meaning I think a beer should be so bitter it makes you shudder, and I find a really good IPA to be proof that God loves us and want us to be happy. My favorite beer in the universe is the IPA that comes from the Diamond Knot brewery in Mukilteo, WA--but the Boundary Bay IPA is a close second. One of the more fantastic things about the Boundary Bay brewpub, however is that (as my college roommate Chris pointed out) ALL of their beers are as hoppy as most brewery's IPAs, which opens up a whole world of options (Scotch Ale and the dry-hopped cask ESB winning the day this trip). As if this wasn't enough, Boundary Bay has the most amazing food, the type of "pub grub" that only exists in the Pacific Northwest (Why didn't I order the Great Northwest Pizza: smoked salmon, roasted garlic, roma tomatoes, chevre cheese, with pesto sauce?)

I don't know if it simply a result of the fantastic brews and food, but Boundary Bay also has that "something" that my local brewpubs lack. On a Friday evening at 6pm the place was getting quite full (though you can still get a table without waiting all night, which is important) and the noise level in the place slowly raised from quiet conversation to exuberant over the course of our meal and beverages. The bike rack out front was JAMMED and many of the patrons had just recently ridden 100 miles from Seattle that morning and were still in their bike gear (in fact, Boundary Bay has their own bike jersey for sale). When another friend drops by, you don't feel strange rearranging the furniture, and it would be easy to fall into a conversation with the next table which led to dragging the two tables together. Its the kind of place where new friendships are born and revolutions planned. Just what a pub should be.

The fantasticness of Boundary Bay as a pub was confirmed for me in a random happenstance there last night. I know only three people in Bellingham: my college roommate (who was at the pub because I was crashing at his place) and two friends from seminary who are now pastors in the area. And as we are sitting in the pub, up comes one of my seminary friends, Lydia, to say hello. It turns out she was at Boundary Bay to hear her friend's band who would be playing in the beer garden later that evening, and wondered what I was doing there. So we chatted a bit, and went on our ways--much like we would have done had we lived in the same area and bumped into one another. What is strange about the whole encounter is its lack of strangeness, even though I was 350 miles from home with 66% of the people I know in a town who happened to be at the same place at the same time. It's just that this sort of thing happens all the time at "The Pub"--lives intersecting, beers shared, community formed. If only Spokane had such a place!

Those crazy Methodists

2009-08-13T22:05:00.001-07:00

If we ever get off the topic of sex at the Churchwide Assembly (please?) we will be talking about a proposal for Full Communion with the United Methodist Church. "Full Communion" is an approach to ecumenical relationships that the ELCA has used quite a bit in the last decade, and has established full communion relationships with several US denominations: Reformed, Presbyterian, UCC, Moravian, and Episcopalian. It starts with each group deciding to no longer condemn one another (a good first step in any relationship), working toward agreement on key theological bits (especially baptism and communion), and once the full communion agreement is officially reached, allowing interchangeability of members, pastors, and pretty much saying "we're basically up to the same thing, let's play well together." It seems to me to be a pretty good approach to working with other Christian groups, and from people I know who have congregations working with our full communion partners, it provides a great basis for common work. My congregation, Bethlehem Lutheran in Spokane, will soon be sharing building space with one of our full communion partners (Bethany Presbyterian), so I'll get to see what this all looks like first hand.

It's clear that some sort of theological agreement is important in these sorts of relationships--though just what level of agreement is needed isn't quite so clear. Theologically, as Lutherans we don't believe that we all have to agree on every jot and tittle in order to have unity in the Church. Article VII of the Augsburg Confession states that “the true unity of the church” is present where the Gospel is rightly preached and Sacraments rightly administered. And I for one think that is right on. So its not surprising that we should be seeking these sorts of relationships even where there are theological disagreements. But as a student of Lutheran theology and the Lutheran Confessions it seems to me we haven't spent a huge amount of time on what "rightly" means exactly these days on either the Gospel or the Sacraments, or how that impacts these agreements. I think the hope is that we'll figure it out as we go along, but it does seem that some of the theological debates about the Lord's Supper that raged in the 16th century actually had some valid differences that shouldn't be so quickly overlooked (though we can play nice and probably not need to kill one another over them anymore.)

The biggest difference from where I stand comes from some of the secondary conclusions that come from a the different views of how Christ is present in the bread and wine of communion. In a more symbolic understanding (ala Reformed, especially following Zwingli) where the act and elements of communion are understood merely to "remind" one of the Last Supper, or of Christ, or are some other sort of symbolic reenacting for our remembering sake, we loose something of the power and mystery of communion. The underlying assumption is that God (who is essentially holy and in charge) doesn't fool around with ordinary stuff like bread and wine, or if God does, its only to bring to mind more lofty things. The Reformation era version of this view was something along the lines of "How can Christ be present in two places at once? He can't be at the right hand of God and in the bread and wine of this table. This "stuff" just reminds us of Christ who is enthroned on high." But as Jane Strohl, my professor at PLTS, once remarked "Its not as if the right hand of God is a folding chair!" Lutherans tend not to get bogged down in the spacial nature of this whole deal, and are willing to embrace a bit of mystery (i.e. if God really is God, then don't you think God could figure out how to many places at once?). But there is more to it than that.

One of the most important things (I think) about the Lutheran understanding of how Christ is present in communion is precisely that God does mess about in ordinary things like bread and wine, and would step down from on high to become present to us and for us, even though we are jerks. In fact while we assume that "on high" is where we ought to look for God, in fact God is really found in low places where God is most needed--among the poor, the suffering, the outcast, and when we are at our worst. This concept is referred to by theology nerds as the "Theology of the Cross" (or for the uber-geeks Theologia Crucis) and is one of the main reasons I love being Lutheran. And, in one of my favorite Luther "quotes" that nobody can ever seem to find in print, Luther contends that because he has been able to experience Christ present in the bread and wine of communion, he is able to experience Christ in his pea soup--meaning in the everyday stuff of human existence. Luther (and Lutherans) insist that God is essentially "incarnational"--meaning "enfleshed" or "embodied" or otherwise deeply connected to the ordinary stuff of human experience--and that's how we experience God: in, with, and under ordinary stuff. We've tended to call this "real presence" meaning Christ is really, truly, actually present in the elements of communion, even if we have no freaking clue how this actually might work on a technical level.

So its hard for me to see how we can be in "full communion" with denominations who don't share this fundamental understanding of how God works in relationship to creation, to humans, and to the bread and wine of communion. I haven't read too deeply about the agreements of 1997 (UCC, Presbyterian, and Reformed) or how these things have been talked through, but my guess is that they really haven't. The Episcopal church, following more closely the Roman Catholic tradition from which they came, seems closer to this Lutheran understanding. And, to be honest, I know pretty much zilch about the Moravians (do you?). And then we come to the Methodists.

Now I don't know all that many Methodists, nor have I experienced a wide variety of Methodist worship, but from the folks I know and the services I have attended, it doesn't seem like communion gets a lot of air time. And my impression of their theological understanding of communion are pretty much in line with those of your general American protestants (aka Reformed) and more along the lines of "symbol" than any sort of "real presence" or "incarnational" understanding. So knowing that we've been able to work these things out (or maybe just get by without talking too deeply about them) with our Christian brothers and sisters from the Reformed tradition (I'm including the PCUSA and UCC here too) it didn't come as too much of a surprise to me that we had reached the point of voting on an official Full Communion relationship with the United Methodist Church.

I know full well that this agreement is very likely to pass without much issue at the Churchwide Assembly (I imagine we'll be so relieved to not talk about sex for 20 minutes that we'll gladly pass anything) but I did think it was my duty to look fully into this whole thing and figure out if I actually thought it was a good idea and whether I could, in good conscience, vote for the thing. Now, my inclination is towards closer relationships with Christians of any and all theological viewpoints (didn't Jesus pray that we all would be one?) but when we are talking "Full Communion" I want to be sure that I'm being faithful to the Lutheran Confessions and their understanding of "right celebration" as important for unity in the church so that our "communion" might actually be as "full" as could be.

So I must say I was pleasantly surprised to read the statement on communion that the UMC put out a number of years ago. It is really quite compatible with the Lutheran understanding though we each emphasize our own favorite things: holiness for the Methodists, human depravity (and Grace, don't forget Grace) for the Lutherans. I'd suggest you check it out yourself (you can find it here). The Lutheran version of the same sort of thing can be found here.

It was also kind of fun to realize that the same sort of practical issues that affected the weekly practice of communion for my Lutheran pietist ancestors are shared with our Methodist brothers and sisters. The lack of clergy led to less than weekly communion in most congregations (they only got a pastor in town once a quarter out in the heartland when he rode in for the weekend). This led to a change in how it was understood, how it was practiced, and the overall point that was communicated. Both groups are rediscovering weekly communion, putting it back in the center of the worshiping life of our Christian communities, and a reclaiming some of the theological implications that have slipped away. I think we have more in common that either group probably realizes. That, it seems to me, is what ecumenical relationships are meant to be all about.

More on Sex

2009-08-10T09:06:00.000-07:00

It is rare that my prayers are answered as completely or as quickly as one just was. Last night I wrote about my teacher Dr. Tim Lull and ended with this question: Who will speak the truth of the Lutheran Confessions like this to us today? And then, in my inbox this morning is a link to the latest edition of "The Journal of Lutheran Ethics" and the second half of a dialogue between Michael Root and Edward Schroeder. In my quest for actual Lutheran theological reflection and dialogue, I must say this is better stuff than the Braaten-Chilstrom conversation I mentioned in a previous post. I recommend the Root-Schroeder conversation to anyone interested in the ELCA, homosexuality and the church, and especially the Lutheran Confessions.

Here is Michael Root's article entitled "Communion and Difference"

And here is Edward Schroeder's response entitled "Michael Root: A Second Opinion"

Schroeder also links to an article he wrote from lectures delivered in 2001, and it is very good as well.

And an "after press time" additional voice in the dialoge (from our Missouri-Synod friends) can be found here (thanks to @chad_thompson) Isn't theological dialogue fun?

What the Church is

2009-08-09T22:32:00.000-07:00

There are many days that I miss my mentor, The Rev. Dr. Tim Lull, and his wisdom for the Church. Today is one of those days. I've been studying up for the upcoming Churchwide Assembly and cracked open (literally, the book is pretty trashed) a book written by Dr. Lull and published in 1980 by something called the "Parish Life Press." The book is entitled "Called to Confess Christ" and is one of the most accessible little books on why the Lutheran Confessions actually matter for the life of the Lutheran church that I've ever read. Sadly, its out of print and damn near impossible to find. I only wish he were around today to write an updated version for us.

Here's the section that jumped out at me, and (strangely enough) is where the book naturally opened when I took it off the shelf (was this a nudge, Dr. Lull? You never were subtle.)

He's writing on page 153 about Article 8 of the Augsburg Confession which he quotes:

Again, although the Christian church, properly speaking, is nothing else than the assembly of all believers and saints, yet because in this life many false Christians, hypocrites, and even open sinners remain among the godly, the sacraments are efficacious even if the priests who administer them are wicked men, for as Christ himself indicated, "The Pharisees sit on Moses' seat" (Matt. 23:2) Accordingly the Donatiasts and all others who hold contrary views are condemned.

Then Dr. Lull adds his commentary:

Here the church is viewed from yet another angle. God's sustaining grace means that the church can continue to be the church even though it contains "many false Christians, hypocrites, and even open sinners." Because the church lives by God's grace rather than human holiness, it can survive even this internal weakness. In fact, since human motives are known only to God, the church can continue without having to try to separate true from false (and possibly, through blindness, losing some of the true beleivers and real saints in the process.) Even if some of the clergy be wicked persons, the church can endure, since it is no more founded on the excellence of the pastors than on the holiness of the people.

Who will speak the truth of the Lutheran Confessions like this to us today?

Emergence and the ELCA Constitution

2009-08-05T14:24:00.001-07:00

As a Voting Member at the upcoming ELCA Churchwide Assembly I've been sent an entire REAM of reading material from our beloved Churchwide organization to plow through in the next two weeks. On the very first page of this tome is a footnote to a paragraph in the ELCA constitution (I was still reading the footnotes on page viii, not so much 100 pages later). This footnote contained the following text that describes the purpose of the ELCA:

To participate in God’s mission, this church shall:

a. Proclaim God’s saving Gospel of justification by grace for Christ’s sake through faith alone, according to the apostolic witness in the Holy Scripture, preserving and transmitting the Gospel faithfully to future generations.

b. Carry out Christ’s Great Commission by reaching out to all people to bring them to faith in Christ and by doing all ministry with a global awareness consistent with the understanding of God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier of all.

c. Serve in response to God’s love to meet human needs, caring for the sick and the aged, advocating dignity and justice for all people, working for peace and reconciliation among the nations, and standing with the poor and powerless and committing itself to their needs.

d. Worship God in proclamation of the Word and administration of the sacraments and through lives of prayer, praise, thanksgiving, witness, and service.

e. Nurture its members in the Word of God so as to grow in faith and hope and love, to see daily life as the primary setting for the exercise of their Christian calling, and to use the gifts of the Spirit for their life together and for their calling in the world.

f. Manifest the unity given to the people of God by living together in the love of Christ and by joining with other Christians in prayer and action to express and preserve the unity which the Spirit gives.

A couple of weeks ago (on the plane to New Orleans for the ELCA Youth Gathering) I read Phyllis Tickle's book "The Great Emergence : How Christianity is Changing and Why"--one of the best books I have ever read. As I read this section from the ELCA Constitution (and I may well be the only person alive to have ever read both documents) I couldn't help but notice a connection between the ELCA's bullet points on how the ELCA lives out our purpose, and the four quadrants of Christianity that Tickle points out in chapters 6 and 7 in the section on "The Great Emergence: Where is it Going?"

Tickle reflects on four primary expressions of Christianity, which she labels "Conservatives," "Renewalists," "Social Justice Christians," and "Liturgicals." Tickle's contends that while one could pretty safely park denominations in the 20th Century into one or the other of these quadrants--there is something happening now (in fact, emerging) in the place where these four strands come together that is blurring these distinctions. At the same time as this "whatever it is" emerges, some Christians in each of these quadrants are reacting away from the center to their own corners--"liturgicals" emphasising proper worship, "social justice Christians" to being even more justice oriented, etc. And yet, amidst the reactionaries, a new emergent form of Christian faith is being born--drawing on and incorporating all these strands and becoming something more than simply the sum of its parts. And, according to a recent interview, Tickle sees this emergent Christianity as on its way to becoming the dominant form of Christianity in North America by 2050,

When I read the section from the ELCA constitution I quoted above, Tickle's four quadrants popped immediately to mind--lining up precisely with the first four ways (a, b, c, and d) the ELCA lives out its purpose in the world. As I ponder the contentious debates we've had over our 20 years as the ELCA, it seems that many of them are really just arguments between the corners of these different quadrants. Sometimes the quadrants team up, in particular I think of the great conflict between the "conservatives" and "renewalists" in the trenches against the "liturgicals" and "social justice" folks at Higgins Road (or perhaps this is just the ALC vs LCA in different garb). It's a battle over which quadrant will rule the ELCA, and what it means to be "truly Lutheran" and with the issue of homosexuality finally on the table--it has become a battle to the death. And yet, even as these battles rage on in our church (as they will for sure in a few weeks on the Churchwide Assembly floor), something else is emerging, a bit under the radar.

I've been a student of emergent forms of Christianity for a while now, and (little did I know) was even experimenting with emergent worship before the term had any sort of widespread cachet. I'm also a big Lutheran theology nerd, and even wrote my MA thesis on different theological approaches to the Lutheran Confessions. All the while, I've had a lingering suspicion that this whole "emergent Christianity thing" (whatever it is) ought to be a slam dunk for a church like the ELCA--but it wasn't until putting these two documents together that I finally figured out why.

First: this ELCA experiment was founded on the idea that these four quadrants could actually live together in one church body. We know that the liturgicals are going to argue with the renewalists, and the conservatives with the social justice folks, and everybody else with each other. But somewhere in the midst of all of this is a different kind of unity, which my teacher Samuel Torvend calls "sacramental unity", that means we all--though different--find our unity not in agreeing with one another but only in Christ. This is (or should be) what the ELCA lives for--and should be nicely tilled soil for emergent forms of Christianity to flourish.

Second: Lutheran theology is fundamentally grounded in Baptism--that amazing, freely given, God moment where grace is poured onto us and into us, freeing us from our fascination with ourselves, filling us with the Holy Spirit, making us one with one another, and sending us forth to live out our vocations in the world.

That's our unique gift as Lutherans in this time and place, I think. We Lutherans live (or could live) in any one of these quadrants or in all of them simultaneously, but always recognizing our underlying unity (item f in the constitutional list) and knowing that it is in the living out of our vocations in the world (item e) that this comes to fullest expression. What if we could reclaim our theological grounding in the vocational calling of all Christians (whatever quadrant your particular calling falls into)? What if we could remember that the church exists not where things are kept the way they have always been or even in the way which most challenges the status quo, but where the Good News of Jesus is proclaimed in ways that people can actually be encountered by it and the Sacraments administered in ways that people can actually be transformed by them?

Phyllis Tickle in the interview I mentioned above, says that denominations have perhaps 18 months to realize what is happening in emergent forms of Christianity and be a part of it or they will miss the boat. My fear is that the next few weeks of the Churchwide Assembly will be so dominated by the "corners" of these four quadrants that the growing emergent center will brushed aside--and by the time we recover from our battle, the time to be a positive force in emergent Christianity will have passed. I think this is our moment to claim this constitutional identity for its true power--to be a multivalent church in which this emergent seed can flourish.

The question is, will we grasp after the false unity that comes from everyone agreeing entirely with one another (which, when it fails, will surely lead to splintering the quadrants) or will we embrace the true sacramental unity that comes from living together in Christ despite our deep differences? Will we embrace all six of these "ways we participate in God's mission" or will we fight so hard for the one we think is most important that the others simply head off to do their own thing? And what will happen to theologically conservative, liturgical, renewalist, social justice, vocational, ecumenical Lutheran Christians like myself?

I have great hope that if our ELCA is able to grasp this moment, that we could be a leading force in living together faithfully in this emergent Christian era--and infusing this often root-less movement with a theological framework, a sacramental worldview, and a vocational way of being in the world. But I also know (as Ruban Duran likes to say) that "God is going to do what God is going to do. The only question is, do we want to be a part of it or not." I for one, want to be a part of it, and I want my church to be too.

Let's talk about sex

2009-08-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

We're now just under two weeks away from the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, where I will be a Voting Member. The topic of the week will be homosexuality--whether to recognize same sex relationships and whether to ordain pastors in such relationships. The Lutheran blog and journal world have been abuzz about these things for years, and it is the hope of many that this Churchwide Assembly will finally put the issue to rest. I find that unlikely, especially given the correspondence on both sides of the issue I have received over the past several months (one of the "fringe benefits" of Voting Members I was not aware of).

I've been disapointed because most of what I have been receiving is, frankly, crap--appeals to "Jesus loves everybody" or "we've never done things that way", hate mail or thinly veiled fearmongering that this vote (which apparently has already been decided in both directions) will destroy the ELCA. I've seen very little of actual theological substance on these issues, from either side, much to my dismay. My biggest concern is that we will make a decision on homosexuality (in either direction) without doing our theological homework and the result will be disaster.

Several weeks ago I stumbled upon an open letter in favor of the sexuality statement and policy recommendations from several theologians (a list on which I find all of my teachers, and many of their teachers) that was in response to a widely circulated one against these two documents Now it was fun to see the competing lists of "important Lutheran theologians" but apart from "find your teammates and pick your side" it was hard for me to see how this contributed much to the debate except listing which theologians agree with the opinions the rest of us have already formed.

But a recent exchange between Herbert Chilstrom (former Presiding Bishop of the ELCA) and Carl Braaten (former Professor of Theology at LSTC and Lutheran theologian extraordinaire) has given me much more hope. For the first time in this whole debate I am seeing some actual theological discussion--honest debate on our core Lutheran theological principles. It is my hope that more people read the letter from Rev. Dr. Chilstrom and the response from Rev. Dr. Braaten and that this sort of interchange forms the background of our discussion and debate in Minnesota.

Finally we are talking about the issues that lay under the issues of "justice" and "sexual ethics" that seem to dominate our talk about homosexuality in the ELCA--and it is these underlying issues that explain why homosexuality is more than just a passing subject in the Lutheran church. Finally we are talking about what we mean by "Word of God" and how has that shaped the decisions we have made on other similar issues--ordaining women and remarried divorced pastors-- that (by one understanding of what the Word of God means) "go against Scripture". Finally we are talking about the fact that we make decisions all the time that affect our ecumenical relationships. Finally we are talking about the unresolved issues lingering in the ELCA since its formation and the unlikely union among pietists (and recovering peietists), liberal Protestants, evangelical catholics, and all sorts of other strands that form our crazy Lutheran family. Finally we are recognizing that this decision is going to be costly, however it is decided, and that we will have to figure out how to live together after the vote has been recorded.

I hope that homosexuality is not yet another stage for a power struggle between these (apparently) competing understandings of what it means to be a "true Lutheran". The ELCA is a wild mix of varying viewpoints, and I think we are at our best when we can actually articulate these things theologically (as Chilstrom and Braaten have done) and discuss them as such. Our theology is best under pressure, and best when we can argue--publicly, openly, and honestly--about what matters most to us, while at the same time putting the best spin on our neighbors' intentions.

And maybe, just maybe, we could get back to more important matters like what it means to follow Jesus and how to proclaim the Good News in a world that is so sick of us fighting amongst ourselves that it no longer gives a crap about what we have to say.

I've gotten hooked on the music from Church of the Beloved and I think their song "Peace" will be my continual prayer as I head to Minnesota--particularly the line "We need each other more than we need to agree." I hope our church can recognize that we need to take care that as we bite and devour one another we are not consumed by one another. No matter how we desire to draw lines in the sand, put "us" on the side of truth and "them" on the side of error, we are all in this thing together--male and female, Jew and gentile, slave and free, gay and straight. I just wish we could act like that sometimes.

Peace

Broken conversations, broken people, we're broken Lord.

Terrified illusions, seeking comfort, we're seeking more.

We need each other more than we need to agree.

Father, Son, Spirit bless us with your love,

with your grace and peace.

Peace.

Let there be peace.

Let us see and not destroy. Let us listen. Let us listen.

Let us suspend judgement for the sake of love, for the sake of love.

We need each other more than we need to agree.

Father, Son, Spirit bless us with your love,

with your grace and peace.

Love.

Let there be love. (among us)

Let there be love.

That's what it's all about!

2009-08-03T23:44:00.000-07:00

I just got back from 10 days in New Orleans working with the ELCA Youth Gathering. My days were spent in the air conditioned mystery that is the SuperDome--chaperoning speakers and bands, setting up for mass cast things like the glow stick heart beat, and trying to figure out how 38,000 people can receive communion in 20 minutes. In other words, having the time of my life.

What I miss out on, living in the Dome as I do at these things, is all the other fun stuff going on at the Gathering--this time especially the service projects that were happening throughout the area as groups of 12,000 Lutheran youth spread out each day to serve.

And so because I have no service related stories of my own, I have to live vicariously through my youth directing friends. Gordon Fitch, youth director to the stars (or at least to the Lutherans in the Spokane Valley), relayed this story to me yesterday and I steal it shamelessly.

The Spokane Valley Lutheran Youth embarked on their service project, loading on to one of a great fleet of chartered buses. They went off to the 9th Ward to pull weeds and clean trash and such things, and after three hours came back on the same bus, where they were given Subway sandwiches for lunch. They had noticed on previous days the abundance of leftover sandwiches from the other returning groups--and how they had ended up being given away to other kids or simply tossed away. On previous days they simply helped themselves to extra sandwiches and didn't give it much thought. But after their morning service project, this abundance (and waste) seemed somehow different. So instead of heading back to their hotel for an air conditioned nap--or strolling through the French Quarter--these young Lutheran Christians spent the afternoon rounding up all the leftover sandwiches, and calling around homeless shelters and crisis centers to see if they could use them. And they walked four miles in the 90% humidity to make this happen. On the way to drop the sandwiches off, a homeless person asked for some money (to buy a sandwich no less) and instead of flipping him a quarter, one of the kids opened their bag, handed him a sandwich and asked if he wanted chips and cookies to go with it.

Now, there are critics who have said "What difference will a few hours of community service really make?" And yes, even though they have calculated these youth worked over a year's worth of person-hours in three days, it does seem like this is simply a small drop in a very large bucket. But if the experience of the other youth there was anything like the kids from Spokane--I think something incredible has happened. In just a few hours, their eyes were opened--to the need, yes, but also to their giftedness. And suddenly a pile of sandwiches was no longer just a free lunch for them, or a pile of wasted food headed for the dumpster, but a gift to be shared, and an opportunity for them to make a difference in the lives of other people. And here were six young people, no longer just a youth group to be shuttled from service project to service project, but disciples of Jesus empowered to feed the hungry. In the Gospel lesson for that Sunday, it was a little boy with bread and fish whom Jesus used to feed 5000. How many did these 6 young people feed? How many will 38,000 feed? And how many will be inspired by their example to serve in their communities too?

One of our crazier ideas in the Dome was the "Peace Pokey"--teaching the passing of the peace to the tune of the Hokey Pokey (8 minutes into video #5 here). (So crazy, in fact, we never thought it would actually happen.) The song goes like this: "You put your right hand in, they put their right hand out, you meet in the middle and you shake it all about. You say 'The peace be with you' and they say it too. That's how you share the peace."

It's so easy to think that the things we do in church (like this peace-passing handshake sign of reconciliation before sharing communion) are "what it's all about." What it's really all about (following Jesus that is) is a pile of leftover sandwiches being transformed into food for the hungry, and group of youth being transformed into witnesses of the Good News of Jesus in a hungry world. Ordinary things--bread, wine, sandwiches--become the very presence of Christ. And ordinary people--yes, especially the young--become bearers of Christ to their neighbors. That's what it's all about.

A new blog

2009-08-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

So I hardly need another blog to update (transformationtalk.blogspot.com and sermons.bethlehemspokane.org/sermons.html) but this whole Twitter experiment has gotten me thinking of things to share I can't fit into 140 stupid caracters. And thus, here I am, setting up a blog.

I've actually been thinking about writing more again. Aside from sermons, newsletter articles, and one masters thesis I've pretty much been on hiatus since my kids were born. And I suppose in this post-modern what-have-you the blog is the hipster emergent cool-kid way to write anyhow. So here I am. Hello blogosphere!